Marja Bål Nango

b. 1988 Gálgojávri, Norway —

Hailing from a reindeer-herding family in Skibotn/ Gálgojávri, Norway, Marja Bål Nango has always been a storyteller—from her early days as a toddler, making her mother transcribe her stories as she told them, to her current career as a script writer and film director. Nango’s 2015 film O.M.G.(Oh Máigon Girl) follows teenage Máigon (Elle Martine Eira) and her best friend Ánne-Sire (Anne Kaja Gaup), who live in a small village on the Arctic tundra. The 18-minute short succinctly captures modern youth and the characters’ blooming sexuality, opening with shots of the girls dancing in front of a laptop for various strangers in online chatrooms. An overarching sense of dread and danger is expertly expressed with intimate close-ups of the girls and their rambunctious male counterparts, mixed with wide angle scenes of the sparse landscape and barren stretches of road in the summer light. Upbeat rock vocals by female musicians open and close the film, further capturing the contours and rebellious energy of adolescence.

Her latest short film Njuokčamat/The Tongues, forthcoming in 2019, was co-written with her sister Ingir Bål Nango and tells the story of a Sámi woman’s experience after being abused by a man out on the land. “I’m very interested in the contemporary Sámi world,” she explains. Nango describes the film in terms of Sámi storytelling, and although a non-Sámi audience might see it as replete with magical elements, for Sámi it is a story containing the truth about the world around them, using a combination of symbolism and rawness to convey the tone and arc of the story. She is currently at work on her first feature-length film, titled Guođoheaddji/The Reindeer Herder, where Nango will again focus on elements of Sámi tradition interwoven with contemporary life. – Napatsi Folger