Permission to Operate is a story about a single mother struggling to balance different roles in her life, when her passion for a man overshadows the love of her child. It is a film about love and family, about how we try to be genuinely present for each other and about how we fail or succeed in this pursuit.

Permission to Operate

In the 1860’s Alaska and Finland are simultaneously parts of the Russian Empire. A Finnish mining engineer Simon buys a Tlingit girl named Tsamo and decides to bring her to Finland.  The child, Tsamo, is baptized and Simon starts to teach her European manners. Tsamo thinks she’s married to Simon and acts accordingly, but when Simon marries a lady of his own age and class, she gets confused. Simon is forced to send the girl away and the battle over Tsamo’s identity takes complicated turns.