The God That Destroys

Accompanied by the ethereal sounds of a Swedish children’s choir, old black-and-white photographs show well-dressed Swedish men posing alongside Sámi people—the Indigenous inhabitants of northern Scandinavia—and classes of Sámi children learning to read and do arithmetic “thanks to” the Swedes. “This isn’t a story, it’s a warning,” says the voice-over. New 16mm footage and animation add further layers of meaning about the cyclical nature of exploitation.

Director Jyoti Mistry, who herself grew up under apartheid in South Africa, approaches Sámi history from a perspective of solidarity, placing it within a global context of colonial oppression and cultural assimilation.