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Cinema is particularly suited for illuminating the kinaesthetic aspects of cultural subjugation. In Sameblod (Sami Blood) (2016), writer–director Amanda Kernell portrays the self-assimilatory journey of an indigenous 14-year-old girl as a result of forced and voluntary exposure to novel bodily experiences. Using as its conceptual point of departure the term ‘kinaesthesia’ – the body’s sensations of movement and spatiality – this article analyses the filmic techniques Kernell uses to offer audiences a vicarious experience of assimilation, and later, cultural revitalization. A century after majority-population Swedes subjected Kernell’s family and other Sámi to social Darwinian racism, the director’s third-eye film turns the camera back at those who portrayed them as inferior. Sami Blood exemplifies how important sensory and affective experiences are for our politics, histories and perception of cultural texts. The film is part of the past decades’ Sámi revitalization, an artistic movement in which screen media have played an important role.