Katja Gauriloff

Director Katja Gauriloff hosted a Womarts Masterclass at Tampere Film Festival, organised by WIFT Finland in collaboration with International Sámi Film Institute. Katja Gauriloff shared her path as a filmmaker and talked about her passion and inspiration for filmmaking. Gauriloff wanted to represent her own cultural background and bring forth her voice as a Skolt Sámi filmmaker. She wanted to increase the equality and diversity of native filmmakers. 

The moderator of the masterclass was Liisa Elisabet Holmberg who have been a film commissioner at the International Sámi Film Institute. The institute wanted to partner up with Womarts because native women have been productive filmmakers. The majority of Sámi filmmakers are women and because of that they should have a strong standing in the international filmmaking scene as well. Sámi stories interest and touch various audiences, and they are becoming more and more mainstream in the world.

Katja Gauriloff (b. 1972) is a Skolt Sámi film director and screenwriter who lives and works in Lapland. She is also a co-owner of the Oktober Production Company. Her documentary films A Shout into the Wind, Canned Dreams and Kaisa’s Enchanted Forest have been awarded the State Quality Support for cinema productions in Finland. Her films has been screened and awarded at various festivals around the world. Canned Dreams and Kaisa’s Enchanted Forest have been both part of the Berlinale festival selection. Kaisa’s Enchanted Forest opened the Berlinale NATIVe section in 2017. Katja Gauriloff has been awarded for the Finnish National Film Awards (Jussi) for the best documentary film in 2016. Her first debut fiction feature Baby Jane which is based on a novel by award winning author Sofi Oksanen, was premiered 2019. Katja Gauriloff is currently working on her second fiction feature Je’vida which will be the first Skolt Sámi language feature film in history.