A film in dreamtime and a nomadic reflection on the alien and the familiar: Finnish filmmaker Jenni Kivistö feels a strange kinship to the Wayuu tribe who live in the desert between Colombia and Venezuela. The seriousness, but also the silence of these people seem eerily familiar to her – a closeness she carefully nourishes and questions. She approaches the reality of this distant place in the north of South America in four chapters of enchanting and powerful imagery, interspersed with light and lyrical notes that resemble diary entries. The attention she pays to a Wayuu myth of origin is as great as the serene curiosity with which she incorporates everyday moments and dreams, strange rituals and ghostly incidents in her narrative.

At some point Kivistö relates her encounter with a little boy who teaches her a few words of his language while she in turn teaches him Finnish vocabulary. Some terms are similar. Others bear no relationship to each other at all. There’s only one word that means the same in Finnish and Wayuu: “maa”. It’s the word for earth. Or: the land.

Ralph Eue

He feels good in the forest; when he’s accompanied by his language interpreter, the chaos of his thoughts comes to rest there. That’s what Lauri types on a cardboard letter grid – which is how he manages to use language to bring his inner life in touch with his environment. The lanky boy who loves philosophy is autistic. He defies his handicap. With an impressive will to communicate, to express himself, Lauri plans to write a book about his special experience of life. He is frequently constrained and made dependent on others by his autism. For an adolescent this distance between desire and fulfilment, as well as the independence denied him, is an emotional roller coaster ride in more than one sense. Breaks in the vital regularity and first hopeful steps, for example looking for a girlfriend, lie close together.

In her unyielding and empathic portrait Finnish director Niina Brandt follows her protagonist through moments of joy and anger, of embracing the world and retiring. She effortlessly shifts between compelling immediacy and close visual observation of Lauri’s everyday environment. Small islands of rest are placed in the flow of events – floating macro shots of the calm forest show the ever-evolving life there from up close.

André Eckardt

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Nominated for Young Eyes Film Award