Kernell's 'Brace Your Heart' Premieres at TIFF — SkimNews
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- Amanda Kernell's "Brace Your Heart" premiered at TIFF and the San Sebastián Film Festival, with TrustNordisk handling sales
- The film follows Ejva (Elli Sara Valkeapää), a teenager tending her late father's reindeer herd who accepts help from Heaika (Andte Gaup-Juuso) while falling for his cousin
- Kernell frames forgiveness as collective necessity, asking: "How do you free yourself from trauma, both as an individual and as a group, when you're so dependent on each other?"
- The production used real helicopters, snowmobiles, and trains with no CGI for the herding scenes; Kernell noted reindeer herding is among Sweden's deadliest professions after being an army pilot
- The title comes from a Sámi saying about hardening one's heart to survive hardship — which the protagonist Ejva deliberately resists
- Kernell previously explored her Sámi roots in "Sámi Blood" and made her second feature "Charter" while recovering from a severe concussion that left her unable to read or see clearly for months
Why it matters: Kernell grounds the film in her own family's reindeer-herding life rather than treating Sámi experience as abstraction, and the production commits to real locations and weather rather than CGI — giving the trauma-and-forgiveness story a documentary weight rare for festival dramas set in Indigenous communities.
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