In the film the Sámi people are fighting for their existence and their uncertain future with political acts. Eatnameamet is sort of a pamphlet and a cry for help for the future of the only indigenous people of the European Union - through the voices of the Sámi people themselves. Meanwhile the audience will know what the polemics of the Sámi people are really about, how they’ve been developed and why they’re being sustained.
In the film there will be startling political scenes and interviews, where the Sámi people bring out the effects of the Government of Finland’s colonizing policy in their everyday lives. The individuals in the film are concerned about the welfare of the people and do everything for the moral and legal rights of the Sámi people in Finland. It is however extremely hard, since the interests of the Government in the Sámi region are financial, and the rights of the Sámi people do not fit together with the utilization of the natural resources.
The film will show that in every dispute of the Sámi people, in the end the real concern is about the rights for lands and natural wealth. Through the archive material the history is present in the film and it will share knowledge about what’s been hidden from the Finnish people, but also from the Sámi people themselves.
The story of the film is focused on the present day and future. How to save a broken, disappearing nation? How to survive as a nation in this country, where the Government seems to make ruthless decisions at the expense of the nation's vitality and mental health? As the fight against the State drives the individual Sámi people to the brink of exhaustion and despair, where can the healing and survival be found? The film is searching for answers to these questions.
The film is based on different encounters with Sámi people. The protagonists are the people of Sámi, but in the film the audience gets to know five different persons, in which the disputes are personalized to. The scenes of the film consist of political situations, discussions closed from the mainstream people of Finland, intimate interviews, archive material and tracking shots of nature and the Earth.
Eatnameamet offers a unique possibility to get to follow the Sámi people’s fight for their existence in Finland. The treatment of Sámi people in history and also present day is not following any laws, and when it comes to the Sámi people, the Government has in many ways violated both civil rights and its own laws in many ways. The film has recorded the distress and despair of the Sámi people, which the major Finnish audience does not see and can’t know. As the audience sees the film, they will be able to understand how the Sámi people feel, when the base of their own culture is bit by bit decaying.
The film gives voice to those who are not being listened, no matter how loud they shouted.