San Sebastian Interntional Film Festival 2026 (SSIFF 2026) Overview – Jennifer Green reports
San Sebastián Kicks Off in Spain (Sept 18-26), inaugurating its 74th annual edition in the northern Spanish city, with 263
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amanda kernell
San Sebastian Interntional Film Festival 2026 (SSIFF 2026) Gender Report – Jennifer Green reports
Former festival deputy director Maialen Beloki was selected last spring as the San Sebastian International Festival’s new director starting with next year’s 75th edition, replacing the long-serving José Luis Rebordinos. She will be the festival’s first female director and is set to lead an executive team currently made up of mostly women. The festival also announced this year that it will honor a female producer of one of the eight films screening in three key competitive sections with its RTVE-Otra Mirada Award. The prize, which has traditionally focused on films about women, will now recognize “the key role of female producers as the essential cog of audiovisual creation.”
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Sydney FF 2020: CHARTER – Review by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
Charter focuses on Alice, a woman in transition, who is bucking traditions and struggling to find her own place in the world. She’s on the losing side of a nasty custody battle with her ex-husband who is unrestrained in his determination to exclude her from their lives.
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MOVIE OF THE WEEK June 2 -9: SAMI BLOOD
Writer/director Amanda Kernell’s thoughtful, beautifully crafted first feature is an intimate, compelling coming of age tale of a Sami girl who must choose between her denigrated indigenous culture and mainstream Swedish lifestyle. Sami Blood is a heart-wrenching eye opener. Continue reading…
SAMI BLOOD — Review by Susan Wloszczyna
When a film transports you to a society you never knew existed, it can prove magically transcendent while incredibly moving. Add an adolescent female discovering what she is capable of and you have me hooked. That happened last year with The Eagle Huntress, a documentary about a Mongolian girl’s singular feats with her regal bird of prey. And it happens again in a far different arena with the 14-year-old female Laplander who is the focus of Sami Blood, a Swedish coming-of-age drama handled with an impressive delicacy of purpose by first-time filmmaker Amanda Kernell.
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SAMI BLOOD — Review by Jennifer Merin
>Amanda Kernell’s beautifully crafted first feature tells the heart-wrenching story of Elle-Marje, a Sami teenager taken her semi-nomadic family of reindeer herders and placed in a boarding school for assimilation into the predominant Swedish society, which considered Sami genetically inferior and capable only of menial jobs. Beautifully crafted with exceptionally skilled storytelling, spectacular cinematography, flawless editing, and stunning lead performances by first-time actresses and real life sisters Lene Cecilia Sparrok as Elle-Marje and Mia Erika Sparrok as her sister, Njenna. Sami Blood is an enlightening narrative.
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SAMI BLOOD — Review by Cate Marquis
In her feature film debut SAMI BLOOD, director/writer Amanda Kernell offers a moving coming-of-age story of two sisters, members of the reindeer-herding indigenous Sami people, in 1930s Sweden. Told from the viewpoint of the older sister, a bright 14-year-old who dreams of becoming a teacher, the films depicts their experiences with the dominate Swedish culture who called her people Lapps, as a time when racial prejudice as well as eugenics, the pseudo-science of race biology which laid the groundwork for the Nazis, was common.
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