Mon leäm säʹmmlaž – I am a Skolt Saami movie series

Mon leäm säʹmmlaž is a series of short movies produced by Oummu rââst raaj project. Each movie tells a personal story of a Skolt Saami person searching for their identity. You can watch the first movie of the series, Laura Feodoroff's story, below.

Mon leäm säʹmmlaž – Laura Feodoroff

Picture: Poster of the movie Mon leäm säʹmmlaž – Laura Feodoroff 

Mon leäm säʹmmlaž - Laura Feodoroff is an autobiographic short film about a Skolt Saami dance artist, who, while forging her own journey back to her roots, sheds light on shared phenomena experienced by entire generations in the Skolt Saami community.

What is it like to grow up without one of your native languages? To search for your own relationship with your cultural heritage in adulthood? What does it mean to be a Skolt Saami today – what might it look like in all of its shades and colors?

In the film, Feodoroff lets the viewer in on the delicate, beautiful, sometimes even painful process of getting to know her own identity as part of a centuries-long chain of Skolt Saami people. The continuity emerges clearly when Feodoroff returns to her family landscapes and goes through a cardboard box of old stuff. She digs up a photograph of a Skolt Saami woman folded between a wrinkled local newspaper – a glass-framed photograph that reflects the face of another Skolt Saami, one that is also complete and whole.

The movie is in Finnish with English and Norwegian subtitles.