Alex Heeney reviews Sámi filmmaker Egil Pederson’s film My Father’s Daughter at TIFF 2024
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Sámi-Norwegian filmmaker Egil Pederson’s My Father’s Daughter begins with a sort of Looking for Eric premise before expanding into a very thoughtful, often funny, coming-of-ager about the search for identity and the impossibility of ever really finding it. Sámi teenager Elvira (Sarah Olaussen Eira in a winning breakout performance) has spent her whole life believing she was a test tube baby with a Danish sperm donor, who, in her mind, is Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Game of Thrones), who appears to comfort her as an imaginary dad friend.
Having spent her life vehemently rejecting her Sámi identity, she suddenly finds herself unsure who she is when she discovers her father might be Sámi, too. Elvira responds to the revelation about her father by suddenly embracing her Sámi identity in ways that seem not particularly authentic. In one hilarious piece of subtle production design, her poster of Coster-Waldau gets replaced with one for the film Sámi Blood.
Exploring the challenges of a minority identity in the film My Father’s Daughter
For Pederson, figuring out your identity as a minority is an often funny minefield when everyone around you wants to leverage that identity for personal gain. Pederson sets up Elvira’s influencer classmate as a foil, as she’s constantly manipulating her own identity by claiming authenticity. At one point, she uses her connection to Elvira and Elvira’s Sámi identity to get more followers. When she thinks Elvira might be queer, too, it’s like a jackpot.
But everyone around Elvira struggles with their identity. Her best friend is constantly reading Karl Marx as though his pontifications on women were gospel. Her mother has recently come out as queer and started dating a woman but hasn’t quite figured out appropriate boundaries; Elvira regularly catches them making out. Elvira’s father turns up out of the blue, suddenly claiming being a father is crucial to his identity after years of absence. Everyone gives Elvira contradictory and bad advice about how a person should be. My Father’s Daughter is a sharp, satirical look at the irony of trying on different identities you can’t claim in search of your own identity.
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