SÁMIS

For almost a decade, I've been working on my Savoir-Faire project — a collection of portraits featuring artisans, craftsmen, artists, and athletes from all over the world, showcased in their working environments.

In March 2020, I traveled to northern Finland to meet Lapland's skilled craftsmen, but we had to return to France after only 48 hours due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

After completing more than 400 portraits in Japan, USA, France, South Africa, Indonesia, and Peru, I felt it was time for me to explore new directions. Subconsciously, my brief encounter with Hilla Rina Palokari, who guided us during the 2020 aborted project, sparked the idea for a project about Sami culture.

A couple of years ago, while discussing my desire to return to Sápmi (Lapland) with my friend Antonin Burbaud, we shifted from the idea of creating a new portrait series about the Sami people to thinking about making a documentary about their culture.

Soon after that, Cyril Hucleux joined our team as a co-writer and co-director, and Hilla started supporting us remotely in reaching out to the Sami community. And then the adventure began.

Because of a ten-year habit of producing my own projects and organizing everything by myself, we didn't think about reaching out to distribution companies, production teams, nor seeking funding and solutions like CNC, not out of arrogance but due to a lack of familiarity with the regular process of making a feature movie. While this allowed us great freedom in the making, we now face the fact that distributing a final product is something we might have considered earlier.

Nevertheless, we believe in our film and are seeking production and distribution partners who might recognize the strength of SÁMIS. We put our hearts into creating a film that shows great respect and admiration for the Sami culture, and we hope you’ll enjoy watching it as much as we loved making it.

We look forward to your thoughts.

Best Regards,

Roman Jehanno