Take two women. Marion’s mother committed suicide after suffering sexual abuse as a child. Ida was raped as a teenager. What they have in common is that they are both part of close-knit Sapmi communities where discussing such horrific experiences is considered taboo.
Stockholm-based filmmaker Liselotte Wajstedt gives Ida and Marion a voice in her harrowing new documentary, The Silence in Sapmi, screening in the Best Nordic Documentary competition at the Nordisk Panorama this week.
“I am a Sapmi myself. I come from Kiruna. I knew Ida’s mother from before. She invited me to lunch. She said her daughter got raped and that Ida wanted to see me,” Wajstedt remembers how she started work on the project back in 2014. “This was a very strange year because two of my cousins took their lives. They were reindeer herders. It was kind of a shock for my family, of course.”
The director realised how damaging the culture of secrecy within the community had become. She spent a year following Ida as they waited for the rape case to come to court. However, the authorities decided not to proceed.
By then, Wajstedt had also met Marion, a Sapmi from Norway who was keen to speak on camera about her mother who had taken her own life a year before. Ida was keen to continue filming. Wajstedt therefore decided to tell the women’s stories in tandem. “It took me seven years,” she sighs about what turned into an epic endeavour. “It was…a hard journey, for me and them.”
Both women had an instinctive trust of the filmmaker. “Ida saw I listened to her,” Wajstedt observes. “When I interviewed them, I wanted to be alone with them. They trusted me.”
Ida was only 18 when Wajstedt first met her. Seven years on, she is a successful young woman with her own TV chat show. Marion takes comfort in her fitness and outdoor pursuits. Both women refuse to accept a role as victims. Nonetheless, their anger and hurt remain apparent.
This may be a documentary but, alongside the interviews and reporting, it has expressionistic flourishes. In order to convey the trauma which Ida endured, Wajstedt uses animation and some very eerie special effects.
“Basically, I am a visual artist. My education is [in] animation and experimental film,” the director explains her approach. “When you are exposed to a rape, you go into yourself. I think the cave is a metaphor for that.”
The Silence in Sápmi has been receiving a positive response at screenings from Norway to Canada. The documentary is credited with encouraging open discussion about subjects like mental health and sexual abuse. Wajstedt is receiving invitations from festivals far and wide. Shortly after the Nordisk Panorama, she will be heading to Peru to present the film in an indigenous festival there. “I am going to Lima. They really want me to come.”
Sapmi people have seen the film, at festivals in Norway and in the preview tour in northern Sweden. The Swedish main pre-premiere was in Kiruna. In Norway the film will premiere in cinemas on October 14th. Before that, there will be a special pre-screening in Kautokeino, the town where Ida was raped.
“We are a very small community and almost everybody knows each other,” Wajstedt notes, adding that she is “a little bit nervous” about the screening and that there will be security in place in case anything goes wrong.
When there is a threat from the outside, everyone closes ranks. The paradox here, though, is that the violence and abuse comes from within the Sapmi community itself. Research has consistently shown that Sapmi women are more likely to experience violence than ethnic Swedish and Norwegian women. Suicide and drug abuse statistics are also very high.
What’s more, traditional ways of making a living are under threat. “It is very hard work to be a reindeer herder,” the director notes. She is very keen, therefore, that young Sapmi men have the chance to see the documentary and that there is frank debate about the pressure the Sapmi people are under.
Wajstedt is currently planning a fictional project, Lisa and Cilla, which explores some of the same dark themes as The Silence in Sápmi. She won’t say much about it other than to say that it is a Sapmi equivalent to Thelma and Louise.
Alongside her filmmaking, Wajstedt is a painter and an embroiderer. “I don’t have so much time now because I have so many scripts [to work on] but I really love to do this visual art also.”
Although she has been living in Stockholm for over 20 years now, Wajstedt still speaks about her longing and homesickness for the community in which she grew up. Making The Silence in Sápmi gave her the chance to spend time back in the north. “I had to go home…I had a foot there.” The director’s mother comes from a reindeer herding family. She has an uncle and several cousins who still work as reindeer herders.
When Wajstedt was growing up in Kiruna, a mining town, there was still racism toward the Sapmi people. However, in her work, and in her life, she has always sought to embrace her Sapmi roots. “I took it back. I learned the language and started to wear the dress. I think I have the Sapmi identity,” she declares.
