Brace Your Heart

With each film, Amanda Kernell further establishes herself as a defining voice in contemporary Nordic cinema. Returning to Sápmi for her third feature, Kernell crafts an intimate, layered love story in which the rhythms of reindeer herding shape every aspect of life, from family and community to identity, desire, and belonging.

When Ejva inherits her late father’s reindeer herd, mounting expectations push her toward accepting the romantic advances of Heaika, a powerful local leader whose courtship gradually gives way to mistreatment. Falling unexpectedly for his cousin Nejla offers the possibility of another life, but it’s one that threatens Ejva’s future and her place with her people and the land that has always defined her. What begins as a personal story gradually reveals itself to be something more expansive, as questions of autonomy and tradition become inseparable from the realities of life in northernmost Europe.

Kernell has a remarkable gift for creating fully realized characters from the smallest of gestures and imbuing landscapes with emotional power. As both writer and director, she brings a singular cinematic vision to every frame while leads Elli Sara Valkeapää and Vincent Niia — both actual reindeer herders like much of the cast — deliver extraordinary performances as Ejva and Nejla.

Without losing sight of its deeply moving story, Brace Your Heart becomes a richly observed portrait of what Sámi women are sometimes asked to endure to hold onto what is rightfully theirs.

JASON RYLE