Sami Blood [Sub: Eng]

An eloquent coming-of-age drama set in 1930s Sweden that revolves around a spellbinding performance by young Lene Cecilia Sparrok.

"Sami Blood" is a beautiful, haunting film, anchored by a startlingly accomplished lead performance. It has the feeling of a distant memory - one that is neither entirely pleasant nor painful, but persistent.

Psychologically deep and emotionally vivid, it's a complex trip through personal and national history.

The film's success comes from how Kernell's skills as a director match the ambitions of her script.

While "Sami Blood" can sometimes seem didactic, Ms. Kernell, who has Sami heritage, richly conveys a sense of the time and place, with elegant shots that glide through the Nordic wilderness.

Sami Blood tells a very familiar story, but the hyper-specificity of its telling renders it a wholly new and quietly profound experience.

Although the film's impact may be different for each viewer, the universal theme of struggling for acceptance is felt by all, and Sami Blood is a terrific example of this feeling portrayed onscreen.

At its best, Sami Blood can be read as an especially remarkable footnote about that complex relationship between bodies and the cinematographic framing that appears every so often in film theory. [Full review in Spanish]

Although it's a just film... it takes a long time to gain momentum and when it does it lacks the intensity necessary to distinguish it from other works with a similar theme. [Full review in Spanish]

With her youthful hope poisoned by guilt, writer-director Amanda Kernell's camera stays on the teenager, so scenes have a simultaneous sense of discovery and reckoning that's grounded in documentary-like observation and adolescent rites.

With its flaws comes a wonderfully evocative atmosphere, full of instilled feeling that normally comes with the territory of remembering: nostalgia, ruefulness, yearning.

The film deftly portrays the alienating effect that vicious institutional and personal prejudice has...