Class shame has never been so … madcap.
I am hesitant to call “A Sámi Wedding” a comedy, but the staccato violin and tuba music that appears at unexpected moments claims the genre. Unlike Lucy Riccardo and Edith Bunker, serious Garen (Sara Margrethe Oskal, who has studied Sámi humor), plays the part of a maltreated woman with an unwavering taciturn expression.
In the midst of hacked phone calls, the local entertainment in this snow-laden Norwegian northland, Garen, the matriarch of her Sámi family, unexpectedly learns her son is getting married in a month. To impress her community, she decides to put on the kind of wedding that takes one year to prepare. This means she has somehow got to get her unexcited family to help her in the mad press to sew, cook, and be dignified. What ensues is a series of goofs, and I am being polite with that term, that frustrate Garen, who passionately wants to impress.
Hear the violin and tuba.
Like America’s stunningly frank “All in the Family,” topics previously taboo for comedy are slapped out there suddenly and bare-naked, making the borders between comedy and tragedy confused.
Matters of shame, not only of class but of experience (like rape), sexual orientation, and race, that threaten the traditional precepts of Sami culture, are exquisitely dramatized with guilt-drenched confessions and accusations.
So, I’m thinking, “Maybe this is not a comedy.” And then, everyone with their passionate issues and betrayals piles into a car that gets stuck in a snowbank.
There is snow everywhere, 220 days of the year. Only a dumb Sámi would get stuck in a town snowbank. The tires spin as the misfits are desperately trying to impress.
Violin and tuba.
“A Sámi Wedding” was a blockbuster eight-episode series in Norway. Three of the episodes were squished together to premiere at the Toronto Film Festival as a movie. I’m sure the disconcerting episodes, set in what we used to call Lapland, were created on a tightrope. Not a tightrope budget but a tightrope of sensitivity. Scandinavian countries have been warned by the UN to stop discriminative practices against the Sámi people, who are an indigenous group in northern Norway, Sweden, and Finland long identified with reindeer herding, fishing, self-sufficiency, and resisting assimilation into Scandinavian cultures.
Its creator and director, Åse Kathrin Vuolab, was born in Karasjok, the seat of the Sámi Parliament of Norway. Her film highlights universal social problems that are not often confronted. Her entire brave series, not the movie promoted at TIFF, is expected to be available on streaming services such as Netflix, Peacock, and Prime Video.
Credits
Creator: Åse Kathrin Vuolab
Directors: Åse Kathrin Vuolab and Pål Jackman
Cast: Sara Margrethe Oskal, Ánte Siri, Inga Márjá Utsi, Ivan Aleksander Sara Buljo, Craig Stein, Anni-Kristiina Juuso and Sverre Porsanger
Country: Norway
Production Year: 2025
Original Language: Northern Sámi, Norwegian, English
Genre: Drama
Duration: 8x30min
Producers: Maria Ekerhovd, Nina B.A. Figenschow and Eric Vogel
Production companies: Mer Film, Tordenfilm and Forest People
National Broadcaster: NRK
Premiere Release: Sept. 6, 2025 at Toronto Film Festival
Official Website: https://reinvent.dk/catalogue/a-sami-wedding/
How to See: Soon available on Netflix, Peacock and Prime Video.
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