The Seal

When I went to the hospital, all my friends were at their grandmother’s or they had a cold”, states the young main character of the film The Seal laconically. When there is no one to accompany you to a hospital but a plastic toy seal clutched in your fist, you are pretty alone in the world.The Seal is an essayistic, contemplating and immensely visual film, where the image is left room to tell. The landscapes of Lapland, the herds of reindeer and the seemingly permanent ice function as the landscapes of the mind of the main character when she lets go with her kick sledge on the smooth snow and tells her story.What happened to the young woman in the hospital is left up to the viewer’s sensitivity, but it is something so difficult and personal that the course of life changes, and the experience causes her to make surprising choices: ”I went to work in an orphanage in the Fiji Islands, even though I can’t prevent sex and famine. That’s the way I paid my debt to the children of the world