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5
TV DRAMA
“Worry jaska”
Series creators: Silje Bürgin-Borch and Vegard Bjørsmo
6 episodes
NRK TV and NRK1
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“17 years in Karasjok, who hadn’t lost the spark of life from that. Karasjok fucking sucks,” says Elli Anne, the 17-year-old main character in NRK’s new youth series “Oro jaska”.
The series added to Karasjok gives a credible picture of teenage life and upheavals in an environment far removed from the Oslo pot. It is told drivingly, albeit with some slightly obvious dramatic hooks along the way, but the goal is to convey thoughts and situations related to a heavy and painful subject, with general points of contact that will be relevant regardless of where you come from and what environment you grow up in .
It has been called a Sami “Shame”, with reference to the ground-breaking NRK series a few years back. “Oro Jaska” has many of the same qualities, and touches on several of the same themes. About taboo abuse and intolerance and where homosexuality is not accepted.
Photo enthusiast Elli Anne (Kátjá Rávdná Broch Einebakken) is out in the winter weather with her camera when she witnesses the school’s coolest gang, Issát and the other guys who ride scootercross, chasing a peer. Despite her own rule of life – “avoid people” – she intervenes. The episode becomes a small forewarning that village power, cover-up of abuse, prejudice and identity doubts lie as structural work boils under a winter-blinding surface.
Elli Anne is an outsider by choice. She is not interested in partying. The boys are idiots, the other girls superficial, and in short, she can’t get out of the village fast enough. That changes when a new girl starts at school, Sajje (Estrid Gustafsson-Fjellheim) who comes from Stockholm, outgoing and cool and who wants to hang out with Elli Anne.
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Sajje persuades Elli Anne to join the party where Issát is also coming. He is Finnmark’s best in scootercross and if he wins the upcoming KaraX race, an international career in the USA probably awaits. All the girls, including Lena (Maret Aile Gaup Beaska) who is the sister of another scooter talent, Lemet (Ole-Gabriel Buljo), want to be with Issát.
But it is Elli Anne who, during a real drunken party, ends up in a room with Issát. When she wakes up the next morning she is covered in bruises, has a blackout and realizes that someone has assaulted her. She does not want to report, but she takes pictures of the marks on the body. At school, Lena and the other girls quickly spread rumors that Issát and Elli Anna have slept together. But Elli Anne needs answers. What happened at the party? Has she been raped while she was sleeping? And why is Issát so unmoved by it all?
“Oro Jaska” is dramatized almost like a thriller. The rumors spread like the wind and the village animal gets up and turns towards Elli Anne instead of a possible abuser. She is ostracized by both adults and peers. No one will believe that Issát could have done such a thing. He is the village’s pride, and besides, it is probably only Elli Anne who is easily offended or “loose”. No matter what she says and does, she sinks deeper into the mire and the truth becomes harder and harder to grasp.
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“Oro jaska” means “shut up”, and that is exactly what this is about, an inflamed culture of silence. An expression that is about shutting up abuse and mistreatment in a small society where everyone scolds everyone and the personal costs are great for all parties. The truth is in bad shape when people protect each other across generations.
This applies not only to abuse, but also to other social structures, such as low tolerance for homosexuals and oppression of others who fall outside when class differences and power are measured by traditions and wealth. Here we can see John Savio prints on the wall and Beluga caviar on the table, which is not at all for everyone in a village like Karasjok.
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There is a strong team behind the series, including a number of young talents from the Sami music and art communities. Silje Bürgin-Borch and Vegard Bjørsmo are series creators, the former with a versatile production and directing background, the latter with first-hand knowledge of the environment described. Bjørsmo, who plays the role of Issát, is himself from Karasjok, and his character Issát is hardly that distant from the experiences he himself had not many years ago.
They have additional help from 20-year-old Eila Marie Engkvist Mutoka and the award-winning author Kathrine Nedrejord. And the actors shoulder it all with great credibility, especially the vulnerability, sense of shame and smoldering will to fight Kátjá Rávdná Broch Einebakken gives Elli Anne, while Vegard Bjørsmo in this series stands out as a charismatic multi-talent.
Bjørsmo is also co-producer and central to the film’s music track, which, in addition to Vetle Junker’s film music, consists of contemporary Sami pop songs from Bjørsmo himself and from other younger Sami artists such as Ella Marie, Katarina Barruk and of course Maret Aile Gaup Beaska, the artist who plays Lena in the film. The series draws strength both in front of and behind the camera from the Sami environment in Finnmark and Karasjok in particular, and type drawings, language and slang create great credibility.
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The authentic is taken care of on the younger generation’s own terms, and thus we get a Sami series that steers clear of many of the otherwise obvious identity markers that we have otherwise seen a lot of in the new wave of Sami films and series. We are entering an everyday youth environment where reindeer herding and grazing and climate change or political issues are not given a prominent place, even if they are there. For example, Sajje has the Sami slogan for pride, ČSV, printed on the back of his jacket.
“Ora jaska” thus becomes another piece in a historically large storytelling about the Sami in film and TV. In the wake of cinema films such as “Sameblod” and “Ellos eatnu – Let the river live”, we have seen TV series such as “Vi lover et helvete” and films such as Netflix’s “Stølen” and “Eallogierdu – Guardians of the Tundra”, while even more is on its way.
In “Ora jaska” it is about everyday school life, partying, falling in love, finding your own identity and standing up for who you are and what you believe in. Not to forget scooter cross conveyed with action and explosive filming. But underneath it all there is also prejudice, bullying of queers, discrimination based on ethnicity and gender and a culture where abuse and rape are not talked about. The teams are public and the generation gaps are growing, all part of the challenges a small society, also where the Sami make up the majority, faces, and which are depicted here on the premises of the genre and the target group.
The series is equipped with all the warning posters, emergency and helpline numbers that are relevant, also because the emphasis on the theme and the social mechanisms in the continuation of the abuse is central throughout the series’ six episodes.