From 'The Handmaid's Tale' to 'Smilla’s Sense of Snow': Director Amma Asante on heroines in hostile worlds

The award-winning director talks to SBS about seeing Smilla as an "unexpected hero" and the personal resonance of her story.

Amma Asante during filming of 'Smilla's Sense Of Snow'. Credit: Constantin Film

Danish author Peter Høeg’s beloved crime novel Smilla’s Sense of Snow took the world by (snow) storm when it was published in 1992. It remained on The New York Times’ best-seller list for 26 weeks and was praised by the publication in 2018 as the “gateway” novel that introduced the world to Nordic noir. The story is, in some ways, unconventional: while it has the usual hallmarks of a Scandi crime novel, it also delves into postcolonialism, environmentalism and even a touch of science fiction. It’s a thoughtful read, cerebral and didactic, with a healthy respect for First Nations’ connection to land and ancestors – perhaps unexpected for a best-selling crime thriller set in Copenhagen.

In 1993, Smilla’s Sense of Snow was named by both Time and Entertainment Weekly as book of the year. Translated into more than a dozen languages and adapted into a film in 1997, it’s not a stretch to call this novel ‘iconic’ – and now it’s been adapted into a sleek, futuristic dystopia for a generation who will find its themes even more resonant in our rapidly heating world.

Told in six episodes, the new series of the same name stars Filippa Coster-Waldau as the titular Smilla Jasperson, a cynical and obstinate half-Greenlander, half-Danish woman who unravels a conspiracy after investigating the suspicious death of her young Inuk neighbour. The adaptation is co-created by BAFTA-winning director and writer Amma Asante, who felt an instant connection with Smilla and knew this was an unlikely heroine that young women today would resonate with.

“I read the book during lockdown, around about the time that the Black Lives Matter marches were happening all around the world, and also my mom had just died as well,” Asante tells SBS.

“Smilla made me feel like I had agency in a world that was struggling a lot, and it was something to do with the way that she looked at and observed the world. She clearly carries baggage from the loss of her own mother, who's passed away. She's had to learn to be a woman without the guidance of her mom, and yet somehow, she’s navigating that. I really identified with her. Being able to find a character who is a woman of colour – she's Inuit – but she's also a hero in her own right, an unexpected hero, really just fascinated me.”

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Smilla searches for answers. Credit: Constantin Film

Smilla is, to put it rather plainly, an angry woman. She is frustrated with the injustice of the world, disenfranchised with academia (she’s a scientist), and disconnected from her Inuk community after being moved from Greenland to Copenhagen as a child. She wants so badly for the world to be fair, but it isn’t, and this is simply unacceptable. It’s this fire burning quietly inside her which gives Smilla the strength to pursue justice and truth-telling at great risk to herself – and so, a heroine is born.

“I think that a lot of people will be able to identify with her in a way that perhaps they haven't identified before with other types of heroes,” Asante says of Smilla’s stubborn refusal to let the world burn.

“The fact that she has this quiet sense of justice, this ability for things to both make sense but she also understands when things don't. She understands human nature as well, and she can laugh at human nature and she can empathise with human nature, all at the same time. She's so human to me, and I love that.”

Amma Asante (right) on set with Filippa Coster-Waldau. Credit: Andrej Vasilenko

Smilla’s world is also fascinating, with glossy, minimalist aesthetics of a digital future gone wrong. Asante took some interesting creative liberties with the original source material for Smilla’s Sense of Snow, most notably setting it in the (not so distant) year of 2040 where surveillance capitalism is the norm, energy is a precious commodity that must be rationed and white ethnonationalism is on the rise. Citizens must wear sleek government-mandated bodycams on their lapels like minimalist brooches, and apartments announce the ID of anyone who enters thanks to their recognition technology. It’s a future that sounds horrifying, but believable and immersive thanks to Asante’s experience working on A Handmaid's Tale.

“It was really important for me to look at Peter Høeg’s book that was really relevant and significant to me at the time that I read it – it was ahead of its time to a certain extent when it was written in 1993, but, like, 30 years has happened in between. Social media, the communications revolution, all this stuff has happened in terms of the way that we relate to each other and the way that we relate to ourselves,” Asante says.

“When you're working on Handmaid's Tale, you are submerged in that world, you feel it from your ankles to the top of your head. I wanted to be able to create a world that was so detailed and so specific to [Smilla’s Sense of Snow] that we knew that we had to tell it in very, very layered details. We tried our best to think of everything.”

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Filippa Coster-Waldau in 'Smilla’s Sense of Snow'. Credit: Lukas Salna

Smilla represents the new generation and the struggles they are facing now and which will be at the forefront of the next decade – climate change, surveillance capitalism, white supremacy and fascism. It’s a shift from the usual work of Asante, who is best known for her historical dramas Belle (2013), loosely inspired by the 1779 painting of Dido Elizabeth Belle, and A United Kingdom (2016), a biographical drama about the romance between Prince Seretse Khama of Botswana and his wife Ruth Williams Khama.

However, Asante managed to make Smilla’s Sense of Snow her own by setting the events of the story in a world “we would recognise” – a sleek, stylish, mildly terrifying dystopian future which she cheekily notes “kind of makes it a period drama, in a different way”.

Indeed, it does – and hopefully only a fictional one.

Smilla's Sense of Snow is airing Wednesday nights on SBS, with episodes also available each week at SBS On Demand.