[10] In 2017, 78-year-old Christina comes with her son Olle and granddaughter Sanna to a small town in Swedish Lapland to attend the Sami funeral of her younger sister.
Elle-Marja feels alienated from the other Sami children, and her feeling of alienation is intensified when scientists from the Statens institut för rasbiologi (State Institute for Racial Biology) in Uppsala come to the school to measure the children's heads and take photos of them naked, ignoring their questions about what is going on and disregarding their shame about having to undress in the presence of each other, the teacher and the neighbourhood boys who are allowed to watch through the windows.
The teacher informs Elle-Marja that she is 'bright' but that the Sami people lack the sort of intelligence needed for higher studies.
She claims that she is needed in northern Sweden or her culture will die out, and Sami supposedly do not adapt well to urban settings.
Hearing this, Elle-Marja decides to run away to Uppsala, steals some clothes from a woman on a train, and burns her gaeptie.
She is invited to join the party, where a group of university students begin chatting with her, revealing that they know she is Sami by way of Niklas' parents.
She desires to sell her share of her reindeer in order to pay for her schooling, but her mother rejects this request and tells her daughter to leave.
During the twentieth century, Sámis were portrayed as savages through Swedish eyes in many film productions.
[11] At that time, Swedish society at large considered Sámis as being inferior, less intelligent, and unable to survive in a civilized city.
According to Monica Kim Mecsei, the past decades have witnessed the change of the depiction of Sámi culture in cinema, from an outsider perspective to an insider one.
Elle-Marja desires to pass herself off as a “normal Swede” while Njenna is proud of her Sámi blood, refusing to make any changes.
Sami Blood doesn't make value judgments on the options, but just presents the phenomenon to the audience.
Thus, Sami Blood is supposed to be an important part of Sámi cinema in Swedish film history.
The Sámi people have stereotypically been portrayed as savages on the one hand who are barbaric and demonic in contrast to the Swedish or Norwegian people, on the other hand, they have been seen as the noble savages who live homogenously with nature, creating a romantic idea of Sámi identity.
Amanda Kernell, the director of Sami Blood, who has a Sami father and a Swedish mother, mentioned in an interview that although the film is about 1930’s Swedish society, she did not just want to make it a historical film which shows faked reality, but wanted it to be authentic and communicate real feelings.
In addition, Sophia Olsson won the Sven Nykvist Cinematography Award for the film.
[20] Sparrok (a teenage reindeer herder in real life) gave her acceptance speech in Sami.