A common variation on the character-driven doc
Kiruna – A Brand New World
Greta Stocklassa, 2019, Czech Republic/Sweden
genre: character-driven
Kiruna – A Brand New World was one film that struck me for a) following established festival doc templates and b) being a strong documentary. Those two don’t always line up, and I know that many viewers are inclined to look for innovation as a sign of aesthetic virtue.
Kiruna, about the Northern Swedish city, is not especially innovative. It uses three characters (a high school woman of Sami/Lapp heritage and her ethnically Swedish schoolteacher father, and an immigrant seeking asylum) as a hook to explore the issues facing the town.
Most immediately, coal mining has caused the earth to shift, necessitating the town to relocate much of its older part.
The film thereby weaves questions about Kiruna’s future identity (relocation, reinvention, and multiethnic makeup) with those about the city’s past (industry, exploitation of Sami people). It does this all quite compactly. The film subtitle is only partly ironic.
Formally, Kiruna- A Brand New World is the sort of multi-protagonist variant common for the character-driven documentary on the festival circuit. In 90 or so minutes, with plenty of poetic style footage in its construction, Kiruna does not fully realize an arc for each character, but each person’s trajectory in the film is interrelated and speaks to the implied future of Sweden.