Kaisa's Enchanted Forest" (Kuun Metsän Kaisa) Opens Midnight Sun Festival in far north Finland with a Magical Mystery Tour through Lappish folklore

        Alex Deleon <filmfestivals.com

  "Kaisa's Enchanted Forest" 2016, Finnish Biographical documentary, consisting of crisp b/w archival footage mixed with contemporary color footage and magical special effects.  RT 84 minutes that seem eternal in the most positive sense of the word.

Written and directed by Katja Gauriloff (42), languages, Skolt dialect of Lappish, French, German and English, with French and Finnish subtitles.  Quite a language workout in addition to being a remarkable document of a displaced ethnic minority threatened with extermination in the wake of WW II, plus a profoundly felt ode to the director's Lappish Great Grandmother, an illiterate Skolt woman originally from Petsamo in Soviet Lappland who survived a succession of extreme personal tragedies because of her unshakable faith in the timeless traditions of her vanishing people. Her life trajectory was painstakingly documented in a series of loving biographical sketches written by Swiss author Robert Crottet who visited Petsamo before the war and became Kaisa's lifelong friend and Biographer. Kaisa kept insisting that his writing was a "pack of lies" falsfying her view of reality, however she sensed that  it was the only way to keep her people from oblivion and went along with the program.

The first sections of the movie Trace the displacement of this aboriginal Sami tribe from their traditional homeland in the USSR, and their deportation and scattering overseas. 

The next section takes up a Grass Roots fund drive in England to save these people from fading away in the face of negative propaganda by the Queen and others. When a famous British actress championed their cause in print enough Money was raised to replenish the reindeer herd essential to maintaning their way of life in a new homeland in Upper Finnish Lappland.

The last part of the movie is a psychedelic excursion through the mind of this indomitable old lady and her magical world view in which This world and the Other world merge seamlessly as she bonds intimately with the semi-divine reindeer that populate her cosmos. This was a rich film experience projected in a giant tent to enhance the mystique and get this Lappland  based Festival of the Midnight Sun off to an appropriate dazzling start.

Sodankylä, Finland

Wed. 14 June, 2916