Finnish Documentary Films 2011

Finnish Documentary Films 2011

Contents 

Finns rush to watch documentary films at movie theatres 3 

The land between the living and the dead 4 

Mika Kaurismäki spends half of his time on documentaries 6 

Moments in life when you realise something essential 7 

Comedy documentaries about conquering women 8 

Feature-length documentary films: 

Arctic Desert 11 

Canned Dreams 12 

Sodankylä Forever/The Century of the Cinema 13 

Forever Yours 15 

Helsinki Twilight 16 

Mama Africa 19 

Paavo, a Life in Five Courses 19 

Reindeerspotting – Escape from Santaland 20 

Rules of Single Life 21 

Salla – Selling the Silence 21 

Steam of Life 22 

The Unknown Woman 23 

Vesku from Finland 23 

Wireless World 24 

Mid-length documentary films: 

Albino United 10 

Aranda 10 

Battle for the City 11 

Barzakh 12 

Christmas Men 13 

A City in Two Parts 14 

A Director’s Journey to Humanness – The Story of Mikko Niskanen 14 

The Good Survivor 15 

The Finnish Legion of Murmansk 16 

The Hunt 17 

Kaskinen 17 

Lemmi’s Love 18 

Look At Me 18 

Play God 20 

Silence and Severity 22 

Virtual War 24 

Contact information 25 

Finnish Film Festivals 2011 25 

This magazine is in two parts. This part is devoted to new Finnish 

documentaries. When you turn the magazine upside down, you will find 

the part devoted to new short films. There you will also find information 

on documentary films that are shorter than 30 minutes. 

More facts and figures about Finnish documentary films are available at 

our website: www.ses.fi – Statistics 

Contacts: 

Marja Pallassalo 

Head of Promotion, Short and Documentary Films 

Tel. +358 9 6220 3021 

marja.pallassalo@ses.fi 

Otto Suuronen 

Assistant, Short and Documentary Film Promotion 

Tel. +358 9 6220 3019 

otto.suuronen@ses.fi 

The Finnish Film Foundation 

Kanavakatu 12, FI-00160 Helsinki 

www.ses.fi 

V 

From Murmansk to New York, 

from Spitzbergen to South Africa 

The many worlds of Finnish documentary films 

Finnish films are doing better 

than ever in Finland. In 2010, 

domestic films had a theatre 

audience of over two million. That 

means almost 30 percent of all moviegoers 

went to see a Finnish film. The 

population of Finland is 5.4 million. 

Another reason for delight is that, 

relatively speaking, Finnish documentary 

films have done even better in 

domestic theatres. Joonas Neuvonen’s 

Reindeerspotting, Joonas Berghäll 

and Mika Hotakainen’s Steam of Life 

(Miesten vuoro), and Mika Kaurismäki’s 

Vesku from Finland (Vesku) were 

the biggest box office successes. The 

biggest thanks should, of course, be 

given to the film makers, but the financial 

support given to documentary 

films seems to be also bearing fruit. In 

three years, the Finnish Film Foundation 

has been able to almost double its 

support for documentary films. In this 

magazine, Liisa Lehmusto will take 

a closer look at the reasons behind the 

documentaries’ success. 

The magazine you are holding introduces 

Finnish documentary films 

that had their premiere in the autumn 

of 2010 or that will be finished in the 

spring of 2011. The films deal with 

the recent history of Finland and Estonia, 

cities in the turmoil of change, 

oceanography, Spitsbergen, football in 

Africa, city rabbits in the streets and 

alleys of Helsinki, children in schools 

and foster homes, women in World 

War II, and Bulgarian men looking for 

Finnish women. If you want to know 

where the roots of the Finnish band 

HIM are, watch Petri Hakkarainen’s 

Helsinki Twilight 1984. According 

to the director, it wasn’t until the postpunk 

era that Finns and the Finnish 

art scene was able to become properly 

European and international. If you 

want to hear Isabella Rossellini’s 

funny stories and bubbling laughter, 

make a beeline for Hanna Hemilä’s 

Paavo – A Life in Five Courses. It is the 

story of Paavo Turtiainen, a Finnish 

country boy, to whom Ingrid Bergman 

and Lars Schmidt said at Helsinki 

airport in 1970, “Come to Paris.” 

You will also learn about Miriam 

Makeba’s artistry and political activism 

in Mama Africa, directed by Mika 

Kaurismäki. In this magazine, Jussi 

Karjalainen talks with Mika Kaurismäki 

about the way he makes films 

– both documentaries and fiction. 

The film historian and director 

Peter von Bagh has assembled footage 

of unforgettable meetings with 

unforgettable directors that have 

taken place during the 25 years of the 

Midnight Sun Festival in Sodankylä. 

The Century of the Cinema is a 90 

minute long compilation of these conversations. 

An even more thorough 

look at the memories and thoughts 

of the festival’s guests is given in the 

three hour long Sodankylä Forever. 

Peter von Bagh has also recently finished 

his three-part profile of Mikko 

Niskanen. Niskanen, who died in 

1990, was an outstanding Finnish 

film director, although his works are 

not well known beyond Finnish borders. 

That is a pity, at least when it 

comes to his Eight Deadly Shots from 

1972. It is unquestionably one of the 

most significant films ever made in 

Finland. The film’s premise, the way 

it was made, and the way it turned 

out are interesting also from the point 

of view of documentary film expression. 

Even if one knows nothing about 

Mikko Niskanen’s films, Peter von 

Bagh’s series provides an extensive 

look at Finland’s recent history from 

the 1930s onwards. Von Bagh’s ability 

to comprehend and bridge things is 

remarkable, as is known by everyone 

who has seen his highly regarded 2008 

film, Helsinki, Forever. 

Mia Halme, the director of Forever 

Yours, says in our interview that 

she is most interested in the moments 

when one realises something essential, 

and in finding a way to depict those 

moments on film. Anu Kuivalainen’s 

Aranda and Mantas Kvedaravicius’ 

Barzakh seem to be realisations 

of Mia Halme’s thought. Aranda 

tells about an oceanographic research 

vessel, and Barzakh about Chechnian 

families who are waiting for 

their missing loved ones – and about 

so much more. The moments in both 

films are quiet, and yet overwhelmingly 

full of meaning. 

I hope that Finnish documentary 

films bring joy and new ideas into 

your lives. 



www.ses.fi 

2 Finnish Documentary Films 2011

Finns rush to watch documentaries at movie theatres 

Finnish documentaries have been the surprise hit of Finnish movie theatres. But what is this boom all about? 

The year 2010 has seen a real 

boom for documentary films 

at Finnish movie theatres. 

Last year, a record number of Finnish 

documentaries have been screened 

in cinemas in Finland and attendance 

figures have surprised professionals 

throughout the film industry. 

The year 2010 has been an exciting 

time for Finnish documentary enthusiasts 

and professionals, with up to nine 

Finnish documentary films premiering 

at cinemas this year. The number of 

new titles has grown considerably compared 

to earlier years; between 2005 

and 2009, cinemas screened from two 

to five new Finnish documentaries annually. 

The selection this year is a stunning 

array of the best new Finnish 

documentary production has to offer. 

The documentaries that have had their 

premiere this year are Auf Wiedersehen 

Finnland (distributed in Finland by 

Elokuvakontakti ry), a new historical 

documentary about German brides by 

Virpi Suutari, Freetime Machos (Pirkanmaan 

elokuvakeskus ry), which 

was shown at IDFA in 2009 and is the 

latest work by Mika Ronkainen, the 

first Finnish director to have a film 

screened at Sundance, Looking for the 

Lost Tango (FS-Film), a portrait of 

Finnish cult musician Tuomari Nurmio, 

Steam of Life (Nordisk Film), a 

touching film about sauna, Reindeerspotting 

(Nordisk Film), a documentary 

depicting the harsh reality of drug addicts 

in northern Finland; Rautaa rajan 

taa (Finnkino), a music documentary 

dealing with the export of Finnish 

heavy metal; and Vesku from Finland 

(FS-Film), a biopic of Finland’s beloved 

actor and musician Vesa-Matti 

Loiri directed by Mika Kaurismäki. 

Pirjo Honkasalo’s new film ITO 

– A Diary of an Urban Priest (Cinema 

Mondo) also premiered in November. 

In 2010, the total number of viewers 

for the documentaries exceeded the 

whopping figure of 160,000. Reindeerspotting 

alone has attracted 65,000 

moviegoers, a figure that guaranteed 

a spot among the ten most-watched 

Finnish films last year. This kind of 

ranking is unheard-of in Finland for a 

documentary film. 

These figures, many times higher 

than previous records set in the last few 

years, are a fantastic achievement for 

documentary films in Finland. During 

the last six years, few of the documentaries 

that reached the box office 

drew more than 4,000 viewers. The 

rare exceptions were John Webster’s 

climate-change themed Recipes of Disaster 

(2008, Finnkino), with 14,000 

viewers, and Jouko Aaltonen’s musical 

documentary Revolution (2006, 

Sandrew Metronome), with 13,000 

viewers. 

The phenomenon extends beyond 

high attendance figures, as documentaries, 

buoyed by their success, have 

become a more talked-about topic than 

ever before in Finland. To top off increased 

public interest, two significant 

international nominations went to a 

documentary film this year: Steam of 

Life battled as Finland’s candidate for 

both the Nordic Council Film Prize 

and the Best Foreign Language Film 

Oscar. 

Trend or statistical spike? 

Having exceeded the high threshold 

of theatre distribution, each film must 

prove its viability at the box office on 

its own. When you look at attendance 

figures more closely, you will notice 

that success has been distributed unevenly 

during this year’s documentary 

boom. Of the nine documentaries, only 

three have attendance-wise reached the 

same category as Finnish fiction films, 

namely Vesku from Finland (currently 

37,000 viewers), Steam of Life (49,000) 

and Reindeerspotting (65,000). 

Even though in view of these numbers 

the documentary film boom seems 

to shrink to just three hit films, Toni 

Lähteinen, programming manager 

with Finland’s largest cinema chain, 

Finnkino, reminds us that the same 

kind of situation has been experienced 

before. “When Finnish films began 

their ascent again in the late 1990s, 

there were three movies that were 

meeting with success at the box office 

at the same time: the war film 

Ambush(1999), the crime drama The 

Tough Ones (1999) and the young people’s 

film Tommy and The Wildcat (1998). 

These 

A good distribution 

strategy does not 

guarantee success 

unless it is backed by 

the most essential 

thing – the film that 

touches and interests 

audiences right now. 

three movies 

were 

enough 

to create 

a massive 

boost that 

made Finnish 

films a 

success at 

movie theatres 

once 

again.” In a market area the size of 

Finland, even a small number of successful 

titles can change the situation. 

At the turn of the millennium, after 

two decades of dwindling audiences, 

Finnish feature-length fiction films 

unexpectedly bounced back to become 

a box-office success story that continues 

to this day. 

In theatre distribution, success 

breeds more success, and documentaries 

are no exception to this rule. “A 

good question to ask is, what if there 

hadn’t been two big hit documentaries 

in the spring and Vesku from Finland 

would have been released at theatres 

now? Would it have drawn as many 

viewers as it has? What about next 

year? Will Finnish documentaries have 

an even better chance at success? Most 

likely ‘yes’,” Lähteinen thinks. 

National and 

international trend 

Despite the more moderate attendance 

figures of past years, Lähteinen thinks 

the roots of the current boom extend 

far, as the number of documentaries 

being screened at movie theatres has 

been growing steadily for ten years. 

People are more willing to go to the 

movies to watch a documentary because 

of a shift in the public’s attitude 

towards the cinema. “Viewers have 

slowly been taught to watch documentaries 

at the cinema. The thought of 

it is no longer strange and all the hard 

work is now producing results.” 

It is also no coincidence that success 

in the distribution field is preceded by 

the popularity of the film festival dedicated 

to documentaries. For the last 

decade or so, documentary films have 

been promoted by DocPoint, a documentary 

film festival held in Helsinki. 

Established in 2002, DocPoint has 

become one of Finland’s most important 

festivals in a short period of time. 

The festival has steadily increased its 

attendance, attracting almost 30,000 

visitors to its selection of documentary 

films in January 2010. 

The change in viewer climate may 

have also slightly opened theatre doors 

to international documentaries, which 

are becoming more and more frequent 

at Finnish cinemas. Among the international 

documentaries that have had 

a theatre premiere in Finland in 2010 

are Wanted and Desired by Roman Polanski, 

When You’re Strange, a music 

documentary about the band The 

Doors, and Armadillo, a documentary 

about Danish soldiers in Afghanistan. 

Even though their viewer figures did 

not rise above the normal small-scale 

art house releases, distributors have 

Steam of Life 

Freetime Machos 

Finnish Documentary Films 2011 3

clearly become bolder at taking risks 

across genre boundaries. 

Reality is currently a global trend 

in television as well, and Finland is no 

exception. The localised versions and 

Finnish productions of international 

reality formats have established realitybased 

entertainment as an undisputed 

part of daily TV. Reality programmes 

have introduced Finns to the allure of 

reality-based entertainment and, as 

viewer surveys on reality programmes 

indicate, the hunt for real emotions. 

Undoubtedly some of the viewers are 

seeking the same experiences from 

documentary films. 

Documentaries are sold to 

theatres with the same 

strategy as fiction 

This year’s attendance figures can be 

explained by cultural reasons, but these 

alone do not explain the success of 

our three hit documentaries. Nor can 

the explanation be found in the film 

industry’s favourite child, digitalisation. 

For years there has been talk of 

the distribution of documentaries becoming 

easier with the increase in the 

number of digital theatres, but so far 

there has been no room for marginal 

films in digital theatres in Finland. In 

small towns and theatre complexes, the 

digital screen is usually the largest, and 

therefore the films shown there must 

offer the greatest audience potential. 

And even though the documentary is 

considered a megatrend by the media, 

it is not necessarily a key factor in cinema 

distribution. 

According to Toni Lähteinen of 

Finnkino, what this year’s successful 

documentaries have in common is that 

their distribution strategy has played 

down their ‘documentary’ classification 

and image. “In distribution and 

marketing, they were not treated as 

documentaries but rather as movies. 

Instead of selling a documentary, the 

distributors were selling a story or a 

concept.” For example, in its marketing, 

Vesku from Finland was clearly portrayed 

as a biopic about a famous singer 

and actor, and Reindeerspotting as 

a shocking, youthfully exuberant and 

topical story about exceptional human 

circumstances. The word ‘documentary’ 

was not even mentioned in the 

films’ posters or marketing materials. 

The distribution strategies of documentaries 

that premiered in the spring 

were presented at a think tank organised 

by the Finnish Film Foundation 

this summer. According to distributors 

and production companies, the 

distribution and marketing of the 

most successful documentaries followed 

the normal launch strategy of 

box-office movies. There was plenty of 

investment in the production of posters, 

advertisements and trailers, the 

films’ target audiences were identified 

and marketing was carefully planned. 

Theatre premieres were preceded by 

screenings at popular film festivals, 

creating a good word-of-mouth base. 

The timing of the premieres was also 

key, as the premiere weekends took 

place after a suitable period from the 

hype created by the festival screenings. 

But even a good distribution strategy 

does not guarantee success unless 

it is backed by the most essential thing 

– the film that touches and interests 

audiences right now. Both distributors 

and theatres stress that the key to success 

is always in the film itself. A good 

film will sell itself first to the distributor, 

then audiences – even if it carries 

on its shoulders the challenges facing 

the documentary film genre. 

The most positive thing about the 

documentary success stories is that 

Finnish cinema audiences have shown 

to be open to and thirsty for new experiences. 

They still dare to go out and 

search for something new and different 

at the movie theatre. “People go to the 

cinema to seek new ideas”, Toni Lähteinen 

concludes. “You don’t always go 

to just have a good time at the movies. 

If people hear that a certain work is interesting, 

they’ll go and watch it even 

if it is heavy.” 

Liisa Lehmusto 

The writer has followed documentary films 

in her work with the DocPoint festival 

team between 2003 and 2010 and currently 

works as the communications officer for 

Sandrew Metronome Distribution Finland. 

The land between the living and the dead 

With academic writing you can only reach a limited number of people, but with a film you find a larger audience 

How can you portray war, torture or death? What kind of film would be 

the most effective at showing the scars of war and violence in Chechnya? 

Lithuanian researcher Mantas Kvedaravicius has approached war and violence 

by showing people’s daily life. His film Barzakh follows a few families 

that have one of their relatives missing. The families do not know where 

their missing relatives are, or whether they are even alive. Life is about 

waiting. Barzakh is Mantas Kvedaravicius’s debut film. He had no previous 

experience in making films but despite this, he managed to get Sputnik Oy 

and Aki Kaurismäki to produce his work. 

Mantas Kvedaravicius 

With his film, the researcher 

wants to reach 

a wider audience than 

the academic community. Mantas 

Kvedaravicius is currently working 

on his social anthropology thesis at the 

University of Cambridge. He is pondering 

on the question of what social 

anthropology means to him. “To me, 

it’s not a social science, but is rather 

related to philosophy and critical study 

of literature. All the big questions in 

life can be studied through literature. 

Everyday details are connected, and 

they cannot be explained by rationalising 

or observing, they must be lived. 

A great deal of literature and poetry, 

as well as cinema, deals with the big 

questions that people face in their everyday 

lives”, says Mantas. 

What is it then that made an academic 

researcher go into cinema? “We 

understand what goes on around us but 

when we try to explain what we have 

experienced with words, we no longer 

reach the essence of it. If we’re lucky, 

we can use film to convey something 

that speech and words cannot. Films 

give more room for feelings in communication 

or in any other life phenomenon. 

The director says that film can be 

used to describe longing or something 

that is lost or disappearing. 

When I ask whether the issues 

concerning Chechnya have interested 

him for a long time, Mantas turns my 

question around and says that often it 

is the subject that finds the filmmaker. 

“It is a question of one’s own life history 

and life experiences. A short while 

ago, I had a good conversation with 

Yael Navaro-Yashin, who is supervising 

my work. She is conducting an 

anthropological study in the northern 

part of Cyprus. Even though, as 

anthropologists, we do not share an 

understanding of the importance of field 

work, which may be very colonial, we 

must have some kind of connection to 

the place we are studying. I often speak 

of electrified identities, in which certain 

aspects connect you to a certain place”, 

Mantas adds. 

“For me, one of the connections is 

growing up in a post-Soviet society. I 

grew up in Lithuania, where the thought 

of resisting the Soviet Union had slowly 

gained strength since the 1940s. There 

was always the idea of an empire that 

had forced itself on our country. How 

should we feel about such a power? An 

even more personal question is, what 

kind of subjectivity do people who have 

gone through all of this develop? How 

have they remained human after all these 

experiences? I think that these experiences 

connect me to Chechnya, where 

people have gone through the same.” 

“I haven’t read the writings of political 

scientists on Chechnya because I 

think they’re worse than shamanism. I 

think Anna Politkovskaya is the only 

person who has written anything worthwhile 

on Chechnya. My research work 

in the Caucasus was not a rational choice 

for me.” 


Mantas Kvedaravicius had spent 

over a year in the Caucasus before beginning 

his filming. He knew the people, 

the place and the events. The film 

meanders through the daily chores of 

the people it follows – it shows them 

cooking, harvesting, building, playing 

and celebrating. People, of course, 

talk about violence even if it does not 

happen every day. Daily life goes on, 

although people’s awareness of the violence 

colours their perception of the 

future. The documentary was filmed 

in 2007–2009, when there was no 

open warfare in Chechnya. “Despite 

this, we would see bombings and battles 

in one place, and there would be a 

wedding taking place a few kilometres 

away. Our Chechen friends said that it 

was like that also during the war.” 

Spectacular blindness 

“Many people want to believe that 

everything is well there now. I call it 

spectacular blindness. The reconstruction 

of residential areas and roads and 

all the verbal assurances hide the fear, 

the fragility of life, the uncertainty. 

This spectacular blindness doesn’t only 

affect international delegations visiting 

the area, but also the area’s own 

residents.” 

The film’s name is Barzakh. It is a 

theological concept which means the 

land between the living and the dead. 

The word comes from the Koran and 

the concept has been developed by Sufi 

philosophers. “Barzakh isn’t merely a 

metaphor, but rather a paradigm on 

which the film is built. The paradigm’s 

purpose is to find peculiarities and 

link them together, so that generally 

applicable statements on the world can 

be presented”, the film’s director clarifies. 

“What our daily life consists of is 

not defined by opposites, instead it is 

existence on the edge of where two become 

one but do not mix. In the film, 

the mother of a missing man says ‘I 

don’t have my son living or dead’. To 

me this is barzakh: neither living, nor 

dead. It is a vacuum, absence”, Mantas 

says, explaining the basis for his film. 

The film shows us how a man 

named Alaudi Sadykov looks after 

his garden. He also takes us through 

the grim building in which he was 

tortured for a long time. Alaudi has 

lost one ear and suffered a permanent 

injury to his arm. Mantas says that this 

man has been between life and death. 

Alaudi has been so close to death 

that, in a way, he has already died, 

but now he is among the living. The 

director says that torture can be seen 

in the look 

“ We would see 

bombings and battles 

in one place, and there 

would be a wedding 

taking place a few 

kilometers away.”. 

in people’s 

eyes. Living 

among 

these looks 

and hearing 

whispers 

of missing 

people 

has a more 

powerful effect on people than open 

violence. 

The film contains many breathtakingly 

beautiful pictures of the underwater 

world or snowfall that fills 

the landscape. “We are water. It makes 

us think what life is about. I am referring 

to French philosopher Gaston 

Bachelard, who wrote about the 

meaning of sleep and water. Bachelard 

spoke of man’s fate, which is to 

Barzakh 

disappear into water or become water. 

Bachelard moves in the mythical 

dimension, describing ships that are 

full of dead people’s souls and are almost 

sinking. I think this image gives 

us consolation, that souls will finally 

find their own place. It’s like a healing 

process full of hope”, Mantas explains. 

The film has been a rich experience 

for the first-time director. “Since I had 

no knowledge of how to make a movie, 

it was great to have Aki Kaurismäki 

as my producer. With academic writing 

you can only reach a limited 

number of people, but with a film you 

find a larger audience. When the film 

comes out, it will do justice to several 

people. Barzakh is dedicated to Natalya 

Estemirova, the Russian human 

rights activist who was abducted 

and killed in Grozny in July 2009. 


Barzakh, page 12 

Barzakh 


Mika Kaurismäki spends half of his time 

on documentaries 

“ 

Kaurismäki has finished Mama Africa, a documentary about Miriam Makeba. 

In it and many other music documentaries he has made, the director lets the 

camera do the writing. Kaurismäki, however, has not given up on drama films, 

which he carefully plans in advance. 

In a way, it’s strange that a Finnish 

director makes a film about 

a South African icon. I believe 

the producers were looking for a filmmaker 

who can approach the subject 

from a distance”, says Mika Kaurismäki. 

“For me, this wasn’t a completely 

new situation, since I’ve done films 

about Brazilian music and artists in 

the past.” 

Mika Kaurismäki (born 1955) is the 

older brother of the famous depicter 

of archaic Finland, Aki Kaurismäki. 

He has just finished his feature-length 

documentary Mama Africa about the 

deceased singer Miriam Makeba 

(1932–2008), a famous icon of South 

Africa and the entire black continent. 

The documentaries about Brazil 

that Kaurismäki mentions are Moro 

no Brasil – Sound Of Brazil (2002) and 

Brasileirinho (2005). Brazil was also 

featured in Kaurismäki’s documentary 

about drummer Billy Cobham, Sonic 

Mirror (2007). Even the director’s 

debut into international documentary 

productions, Tigrero – A Film That Was 

Never Made (1993), had a Brazilian 

subject. It told the story of Samuel 

Fuller, a cigar-biting film director 

with an endless supply of stories, and 

his adventure movie in the lands of the 

Karajá Indians that was never made. 

When he was making Tigrero, Mika 

Kaurismäki already spent half the 

year in Brazil. Currently he is living in 

Salvador in Bahia. 

Makeba’s portrait became 

a memorial film after her death 

The idea for the Miriam Makeba portrait 

entitled Mama Africa came from 

South African producer Don Edkins 

and Robert Eisenhauer of Arte, the 

French-German TV channel. Arte 

has also been involved in Kaurismäki’s 

documentaries about Brazilian samba 

and choro. 

“When we decided to make the 

film, Miriam Makeba was still alive, 

but just before we started filming, she 

fell ill on stage in Italy and died”, says 

Kaurismäki. 

“For a moment we even considered 

cancelling the project. But then we 

decided to continue because Makeba 

deserves a film. Of course, her passing 

away affected things a lot because I 

had to use much more archive material 

than planned.” 

“In addition to South Africa, we 

filmed in Guinea and New York, 

where she lived during her long exile. 

We also filmed in Germany, where she 

frequently performed.” 

Kaurismäki had heard Makeba’s 

unique voice in Finland through the 

radio in the 1960s. He notes that, due 

to apartheid, genuine South African 

music was 

not widely 

heard across 

the world. 

“Miriam 

Makeba was 

its first and 

foremost 

ambassador 

for decades.” 

Makeba 

was not only a musician but a worldwide 

figurehead of the fight against 

apartheid. 

“Mandela was furthering the same 

cause at the same time while he was 

imprisoned in South Africa. Miriam 

Makeba raised awareness of apartheid 

across the world not only in her role as 

a singer, but also when she spoke four 

times at UN meetings.” 

“She often said that her songs were 

not political, that she only sings the 

truth. Her songs became the global 

voice of not only oppressed South Africans 

but the entire African continent. 

That’s why they started calling her 

Mama Africa.” 

“Miriam Makeba’s rise from the 

slums of Johannesburg to becoming 

Mika Kaurismäki 

“ Documentary films 

have definitely given 

me the confidence to 

create fiction without 

accurate screenplays 

and in the middle of 

live situations.” 

the figurehead of all of Africa was remarkable. 

On the other hand, she had 

to pay a heavy price for it – being separated 

from her family and friends for 

more than 30 years.” 

Makeba’s most famous song, Pata 

Pata, is one she wrote herself. “She 

herself didn’t consider the song important 

because she thought it was just a 

light song without a deeper meaning.” 

“She also sang Amampondo and 

The Click Song along with Pata Pata 

at almost every one of her concerts. 

The wonderful Malaika has been 

covered by younger artists, including 

An gelique Kidjo and Thandiswa. 

Makeba sang and recorded in several 

languages. La Guinee Guine was born 

in Guinea. The list of great and important 

songs is long... Luta Contitua, 

West Wind, Soweto Blues.” 

“Documentaries have given me 

extra energy for everything I do” 

Mika Kaurismäki’s best-known drama 

Mama Africa 

films are The Worthless (1982), Rosso 

(1985), Amazon (1990) and Zombie and 

the Ghost Train (1991). In recent years, 

after a long break, he has directed fiction 

films in Finland and in Finnish 

(Three Wise Men, 2008, The House of the 

Branching Love, 2009). 

What is surprising, however, is that 

in the first decade of the millennium 

Kaurismäki has directed as many documentaries 

as fiction films. 

At the time, Tigrero was “a special 

case that had to be made”. Kaurismäki 

did not ponder whether it was 

fiction or a documentary. It was only 

with Moro no Brasil that he began to 

acknowledge that he is also making 

documentary films. 

“In the past, I never planned or even 

imagined making a documentary, but 

now I’m rather happy that I’ve made a 

few”, he says. 

“They’ve given me a lot, maybe even 

more than fiction. They’ve also given 

me extra energy for everything I do. I 


still consider myself primarily a creator 

of fiction and I currently have a few 

fiction films in the pipeline.” 

Mika Kaurismäki reminds us that 

he had quite a documentary approach 

in his fiction films Rosso and Zombie 

and the Ghost Train, working “without 

accurate screenplays and in the middle 

of live situations.” 

“To me, a documentary approach 

is that I write with the camera while 

filming. The shot material moves the 

film forward and creates the story, 

narrative and style. I’m sure this is 

evident in the recent Three Wise Men, 

which definitely didn’t have a screenplay, 

only a structure or a vision of 

what it could be.” 

“The same applies to Brothers, a fiction 

film I shot in summer 2010 that 

continues in the wake of Three Wise 

Men. Documentary films have definitely 

given me the confidence to create 

fiction with this kind of method. I 

don’t think I would have otherwise had 

the guts to get into stuff like that.” 

“On the other hand, I’m currently 

preparing two larger fiction films, 

Malandro and Queen Kristina. They’re 

international productions that will be 

made in quite a traditional way, using 

large camera crews and accurate 

screenplays. And I’ve got several fiction 

stories waiting or gathering dust 

in my drawer.” 

“Making a documentary, at least 

for me, is about writing the film 

while shooting it. On the other hand, 

documentaries are quite rewarding 

for a director. You have to study your 

subject in depth during the process. 

You learn real things about life. With 

fiction, the opposite may happen if 

you’re not careful, if you don’t live 

your life outside the film.” 

Kaurismäki, who is enjoying a very 

productive period, also directed the 

documentary film Vesku from Finland 

alongside Mama Africa in 2010. Vesku 

from Finland is about Finnish actor 

and singer Vesa-Matti Loiri. The 

multi-talented Loiri is locally a huge 

figure who has successfully interpreted 

both crazy rascal comedy and 

dark drama, touching audiences in 

both styles. 

“I’m not preparing, or even planning, 

any other music documentaries 

at the moment. To be honest, I could 

make a living just making music documentaries. 

I get so many offers from 

around the world.” 

“But right now I’ve decided to take a 

break from music documentaries. Like 

I said, I intend to concentrate on fiction, 

at least for the next few films.” 

Despite his claims, Kaurismäki has, 

as a producer, started work on a documentary 

about Jari Litmanen, “Finland’s 

living football legend”, which 

will be directed by Arto Koskinen. 

As a player, Litmanen is associated 

with Ajax Amsterdam’s reign in international 

tournaments during the 1990s. 

Mika Kaurismäki entered the world 

of cinema in the early 1980s in cooperation 

with his brother. Mika directed 

the road movie The Worthless based on 

Aki’s screenplay. However, the first 

feature-length theatre film by the two 

brothers was a rock documentary! Mika 

and Aki jointly directed The Saimaa Gesture 

(1981), which recorded a wild tour 

by Finnish musicians on a lake boat. It 

Vesku from Finland 

Mika Kaurismäki and Vesa-Matti Loiri 

was also the first full-scale rock movie 

made in Finland. 

Will the Kaurismäki brothers ever 

make a film together again? 

“I don’t think so. We both make 

our own things in our own way,” says 

Mika Kaurismäki. 

Jussi Karjalainen 

Mama Africa, page 19 

Vesku from Finland, page 23 

Moments in life when you realise something essential 

Mia Halme is endlessly interested in childhood 

Forever Yours(Ikuisesti sinun) 

is a film about children and 

adults. The children live in 

foster families or in a children’s home, 

away from their biological parents. 

The film’s adults are biological parents, 

foster parents, and staff members 

at a reception centre. We see affection, 

separations, longing. Moves from foster 

homes to parents’ homes and back. 

The film poses the question, what 

sort of an environment enables a per- 

son to grow up into someone who has 

the courage to trust others and to love 

them? Where is that person at home? 

Forever Yours is clear and moving, and 

avoids pathos and pity. How did the 

director find this subject and where 

did it take her? 

”I became interested in the subject 

because it can concern anyone of us, 

but it is still treated mostly as a problem 

of the socially excluded. Sometimes 

the stories of foster children 

have rather inconspicuous starts. For 

example, they may have single mothers, 

who end up as overachievers in 

order to make ends meet. This may 

result in depression, which in turn may 

lead to losing their children. The subject 

of foster children, their parents, 

and foster families has been topical for 

some time, but it was still difficult to 

get a handle on it. There is a lot of talk 

about the subject, but it is easy to give 

in to hopelessness and then to indif- 

ference. That sometimes happened to 

me as I was planning the film. First I 

felt compassion towards the people I 

met, they made me cry. Then I became 

numb, and perhaps a sense of self-preservation 

also began to control the most 

overwhelming emotions,” Mia Halme 

reminisces. ”It was wonderful to get an 

editor on board, and start to feel something 

again.” 

The film follows two foster families, 

a mother that has lost her child, 

Mia Halme 

Forever Yours 

and three foster children. The reception 

centre is also featured in the film. 

The director says that at some point 

she wanted the biological parents to 

have a bigger role in the film, but in 

the end, the camera tended to focus on 

the children. “Adults try to draw attention 

to themselves, children just are.” 

The film maker’s responsibility 

doesn’t end when the film is finished. 


”When you’ve been a part of the 

children’s lives, it would be wrong to 

just disappear. Children have such a 

short sense of time that if we don’t see 

each other for a couple of months, we 

have to get used to each other all over 

again,” Mia Halme explains. 

Even though the film is based on 

foster children, biological parents, 

foster parents, and caregivers, these 

are not the only roles the people in 

the film have. They are children and 

adults in Finland at the end of the first 

decade of the third millennium. 

How to convey essential 

moments to audience? 

”Before becoming a film maker, I had 

made radio documentaries, and I had 

been interested in photos and photography 

for the longest time. I felt the 

need to make small works – not so 

much stories – but excerpts. While in 

film school, I felt that making short 

fiction was contrived. I’d love to do 

things that combine documentary and 

fiction, but when I start filming real 

people everything about them provides 

better narrative than whatever means 

of expression I had been planning,” director 

Halme says. 

”I’m not interested in what is perceived 

as the story, even pieces of news 

are stories. I’m more interested in 

the moments in life when you realise 

something, or rather experience a feeling. 

Often it is only a glimpse of a moment, 

but one that nevertheless makes 

a lasting impression,” she says. ”It is 

interesting how a moment like that 

can be conveyed to the audience. With 

challenges like that, documentary 

films are closer to literature than to reporting 

information. A reporter has to 

always know the latest developments”. 

Mia Halme finds it difficult to put 

herself or her works into any documentary 

film categories. ”I’d like to make 

more experimental films, whatever 

that means. I am not a “direct cinema” 

director. It would be boring to be a 

director who always makes, for example, 

essayistic films. The form should 

be dictated by the subject of interest,” 

the director feels. Recently, Halme 

saw Into Eternity (2010) by the Danish 

director Michael Madsen. The film 

begins with the lighting of a match. 

The theme of a tiny flash of light and 

vast darkness continues throughout 

the film. In Halme’s opinion, the film 

is the perfect marriage of form and 

subject. It depicts the several year long 

construction project of a final disposal 

site, where nuclear waste can be stored 

for 100,000 years. The site is in Eurajoki 

in Western Finland. 

But how does the director create or 

find the right form? According to Mia 

Halme, the shooting must be planned 

Forever Yours 

carefully and the editing process 

should be given plenty of time. 

”The synopsis can be poured out 

from your heart or soul. The subject 

may lose some of its fluidity when you 

write the script, but the editing process 

is what counts when you’re looking for 

the form. And if it’s possible to use the 

same cinematographer all through the 

shooting, it makes all the difference. 

It would be great if we had more cinematographers 

that are geared towards 

documentary films.” 

Let’s get back to Forever Yours. The 

director is still interested in childhood. 

”I guess I haven’t grown up, 

even though I have three children of 

my own. They provide a link to my 

own childhood. I’ve become more like 

the child I was. What fascinates me 

in childhood is its dreamlike quality. 

It is a time of wisdom, when you are 

in touch with everything essential,” 

Mia Halme encapsulates. Probably one 

of the most significant moments in a 

child’s life is when they become aware 

of their detachment from everything 

else and of death. This theme is depicted 

wonderfully in Mia Halme’s Big 

Boy (Iso poika) from 2007. It is a film 

about a 7-year-old big brother, who 

can already read but wants to know if a 

school boy can still sit on his mother’s 

lap. Mia Halme remembers herself as 

a 9-year-old, sitting in her room on a 

bright summer’s night, drawing the 

landscape from her window. ”I felt 

both detached from and togetherness 

with the world. That was amazing.” 


Forever Yours, page 15 

Comedy documentaries about conquering women 

Tonislav Hristov has made his first feature-length documentary film 

Tonislav Hristov 

Rules of Single Life was directed by 

Tonislav Hristov. He has noticed that 

people are much more comfortable 

with being filmed when the director 

is also in front of the camera. 

Rules 

R 

of Single Life is Tonislav 

Hristov’s (born 1978) first 

feature-length documentary 

film, which he characterises as a comedy 

documentary. 


Hristov and his three friends in the 

film are suffering from a chronic lack 

of female company. The men are in 

their thirties, working in Finland in 

fields such as information technology. 

Three of them are Bulgarian and one 

is Macedonian. Two of the men (Tonislav, 

Zoran) go through a divorce in 

the beginning, one (Kiril) has failed 

to persuade his girlfriend to marry 

him even after a ten-year relationship, 

and one (Hari) is used to getting 

dumped within two weeks. 

Describing his ideals in documentary 

film making, Hristov says: 

“Comedy documentaries are really 

hard to make. Scandinavians are good 

at storytelling, but Eastern Europeans 

are better at humour.” 

The director strives to combine the 

styles of his native country, Bulgaria, 

with his current home country, Finland. 

About his third country of residence, 

Germany, he says: “It’s kind 

of half-way, but over there they make 

completely different documentaries.” 

The guys in Rules of Single Life do 

not completely fail in their search for 

women, as Kiril ends up becoming a 

father and Tonislav meets Andrea, 

who lives in Germany. As a result, 

the director has spent periods of time 

in Germany, screenwriting his next, 

similarly inspired documentary. However, 

he intends to continue his career 

in Finland, saying that “Helsinki is 

my home where I’ve lived my entire 

adult life.” 

Not a story about foreigners, 

but about men and women 

In the film, we also meet Hristov’s 

actress ex-wife Nelly, who asked him 

to marry her back in the day – this 

is how things are done sometimes 

in Scandinavia. It was also through 

Nelly that Tonislav Hristov got the 

impulse to go into the movie business, 

as during a night out one of Nelly’s 

acquaintances, documentary director 

Pirjo Honka salo, asked Hristov, 

an engineer, to help her with some 

problems she had with her cameras. 

Hristov offered to become a technical 

assistant for The 3 Rooms of Melancholia 

(2004), if he could in return borrow a 

camera for a few days. 

This was followed by studies 

in cinema and a large number of 

small-scale TV documentaries for 

the Basaari and Mundo programmes, 

which dealt with the issues of immigrants. 

These documentaries gave 

Hristov a chance to develop his style. 

“The TV clips where I was also in 

front of the camera came out better. It 

is important for me that I’m not just 

behind the camera. People become 

more open and are more willing to tell 

their deepest secrets. It’s like sharing 

with them.” 

Rules of Single Life 

His longest work before Rules of 

Single Life was the almost hour-long 

Family Fortune (2008), which Hristov 

filmed in Bulgaria. He was a participant 

in that film, too. After Bulgaria 

joined the EU, several upheavals took 

place in 

the country’s 

economy, 

and 

Hristov’s 

father had 

to start 

looking for 

“ Scandinavians are 

good at storytelling, 

but Eastern Europeans 

are better at humour.” 

a new job after 36 years of serving the 

same employer. 

Rules of Single Life contains many 

pertinent observations about Finland 

and various summer festivals. For example, 

when the Bulgarian men participate 

in a game of badminton for 

singles, they come face to face with a 

situation where the man on one side 

of the net works for Nokia and the 

woman on the other side works for 

Ericsson. The Bulgarians are amused: 

“It’s so Finland.” 

Hristov, however, never saw his 

cuttingly funny film as a story about 

foreigners, but rather a story about 

men and women. “I’ve never felt like a 

refugee or an outsider in Finland.” 

The romantic comedy documentarist 

notes that some viewers will 

most likely consider a comment 

about heavily drinking, non-flirtatious 

Finnish women to be sexist. 

The comment is heard from Zoran’s 

mouth during the episode where the 

four men are on a beach vacation in 

Bulgaria. 

“It is only fair to a man who has 

had his heart broken to give room for 

this kind of talk, too. Men do rational 

things to make themselves feel better. 

This section was cut out, but I felt that 

something was missing. The film was 

too nice, there was no masculinity in 

it. Now it’s more real. This is a guys’ 

film, after all.” 

Hristov’s next work 

makes fun of engineers’ 

love formulas 

The unlucky protagonists of Rules of 

Single Life make good-natured attempts 

at picking up beautiful and energetic 

Finnish women, but does the director 

plan on portraying Finnish men, too, 

in his films? 

The answer is ‘yes’, as Tonislav 

Hristov is currently preparing a documentary 

called Love and Engineering. It 

takes place in Finland’s second largest 

city, Tampere, amongst a group of engineers. 

Young engineers throughout 

the world are notorious for their bad 

luck with women. 

“My engineer friend has a theory, a 


mathematical formula about falling in 

love. It worked for him”, Hristov says 

as a preview of the film. 

“The theory is based on what you 

should say and do. For example, before 

you speak to a woman, you have to 

spend ten evenings at the same bar. If 

your favourite cake is chocolate cake, 

talk about brown, and so on. To me, 

my friend’s theory is more of a joke. I 

always look at even the most serious 

things through comedy. An engineer 

may say that there is something wrong 

with the formula. It’s never him that’s 

the problem. Love and Engineering is a 

film about miscommunication, loneliness 

and crazy inventions.” 

“Once again, I will be part of the 

events, as well as my grandfather’s 

story. He was also an engineer. His 

first wife escaped out of the window 

on their wedding night.” 

Jussi Karjalainen 

Rules of Single Life, page 21 


Albino United 

Aranda 

Albino United 

Aranda 

Albino United follows a highly unusual 

soccer team in Tanzania made up of a 

group of albinos and black players in 

their first ever season in the national 

league. 

Over the last few years, more 

than 50 albinos, some as young as six 

months old, have been murdered in that 

part of the world, where witch doctors 

peddle the myth that body parts 

of albinos can bring people wealth and 

good luck. With the price of a full albino 

body fetching upwards of $70 000 

many albinos have been attacked with 

machetes and had their limbs cut off 

while alive. 

In the wake of these gruesome killings, 

many albinos have fled to the capital 

city, scared for their lives and seeking 

protection. It was from within this 

group of displaced and persecuted albinos, 

that Albino United was formed: a 

soccer team with the only objective of 

challenging the beliefs that had led to 

the horrific deaths of so many of their 

kind. 

The film follows the amazing story 

of this team as they travel to different 

epicentres of albino murders, playing in 

front of crowds of stunned onlookers. 

Despite all expectations, the team finish 

in the top of the league and become 

a national phenomenon, proving to the 

masses that albinos are not only good 

footballers but that they are humans in 

their own right. 

Juan Reina Marc Hoeferlin Barney 

Broomfield 

Juan Reina 

Iseta – Behind the Roadblock, 

Sculpting Life, Light in Shadow 

Marc Hoeferlin 

Night Commuters – Children of Northern 

Uganda, Shooting Ghosts, Still Human, Still 

Here, On That Day: Haditha 

Barney Broomfield 

Welcome to the Real World, 

On That Day: Haditha 

Directors Juan Reina, Marc Hoeferlin, 

Barney Broomfield: 

The most memorable moment that springs 

to mind is the surreal experience of travelling 

over 900 miles in a rented bus packed to the 

brim with albinos and camera equipment... 

The team was due to play a series of games 

right smack in the heart of the most dangerous 

areas for albinos (an incredibly brave act 

to do), and the only option was to drive. 

One of the albinos pointed out to us, almost 

as a joke, that in light of the fact that 

a whole albino body can fetch upwards of 

70 000 USD, the human cargo alone in the 

bus would be worth millions of dollars in 

the black market. The heavily armed police 

escort that had been following us since we 

passed the equator made a great deal more 

sense then. 

Aranda is a film about the curious human 

being’s thirst for knowledge. 

The protagonist is a ship, the marine 

research vessel Aranda, which 

sails back and forth on a shoreless 

ocean, never reaching port. 

The three elements in the film are 

the ship, the sea and man, the largest 

of these being the sea. The sea follows 

a different time frame than humans. 

It takes about 1 200 years for a sea 

current to travel from the North 

Atlantic to Antarctica and back – a 

human lifetime is not long enough to 

register the direction taken by great 

changes occurring in the sea. 

2011 | HD, DigiBeta | 16:9 | Stereo | 58’ 

Director: Anu Kuivalainen Script: Anu 

Kuivalainen Cinematography: Jarkko T. 

Laine Editing: Lasse Summanen Sound 

Aranda 

design: Janne Laine Music: Sanna Salmenkallio 

Producer: Markku Tuurna Production 

company: Filmimaa Ltd. Co-production: 

Silverosa Film (Sweden) Production support: 

The Finnish Film Foundation, AVEK, 

Nordisk Film & Tv Fond, SFI, MEDIA Financing 

TV company: YLE, ARTE, SVT International 

sales: Filmimaa Ltd. 

Anu Kuivalainen 

Anu Kuivalainen is known for films that 

make their viewers think and feel. She 

has directed films like Christmas in the 

Distance (Orpojen joulu), Black Cat on 

the Snow (Musta kissa lumihangella) and 

Grandad’s Waking Dream (Taatan paha 

uni). Her films have won several international 

awards and they have been shown 

at international festivals, including IDFA 

Amsterdam, Nordisk Panorama, Mannheim-Heidelberg 

and the Edinburg Filmfestival. 

Anu Kuivalainen 

England | 2010 | HDCAM, DigiBeta | 

Around 12 hours into our journey the 

1.78 (16x9 video) | Dolby SR | 65’ 

smooth Tarmac turned into a cratered 

marshland of unnavigable potholes and 

Directors: Juan Reina, Marc Hoeferlin, Bar- 

nightmarish dust. Closing the windows, 

ney Broomfield Script: Juan Reina, Marc 

we trapped ourselves into the un-air con- 

Hoeferlin, Barney Broomfield Cinemato- 

ditioned bus with temperatures outside 

graphy: Barney Broomfield, Juan Reina 

exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The bus 

Editing: Ash Jenkins Sound design: Scott 

was not only filled with malarial ridden 

Wilkinson, Fitzrovia Post Music: Salif Keita 

mosquitos and the stench of 30 heavily 

Producers: Nick Broomfield (Executive Pro- 

sweaty men, but to top it all off, we all put 

ducer), Marc Hoeferlin, Juan Reina Produc- 

up with the nauseating smell of our dinner 

tion company: Lafayette Films Production 

for the day, dried fish. By that time however, 

support: NFTF, SFI Financing TV compa- 

we had all become one big family, so more 

nies: National Geographic, Channel 4 Inter- 

than anything else, we were laughing our 

national sales: National Geographic 

heads off at the situation. 

Aranda 


Arctic Desert 

Battle for the City 

Arctic Desert 

Autiomaa 

In a place where the last ice age still prevails, a group of geologists is 

going to spend a few weeks in the High Arctic of Spitzbergen. In the 

sediment layers they are looking for new evidence on the mechanisms 

of climate changes during the last 100 000 years, which include several 

enormous ice ages on the European continent. 

This expedition is their greatest dream. No one can predict what 

will happen hundreds of miles away from the nearest habitation. Here 

we can understand the basic theme of the film, the eternal passion of a 

scientist to look for new pieces of knowledge even risking their health 

and sometimes their life. They have to worry about the roaming polar 

bears. That is why they have to carry rifles all the time and they have 

to know how to shoot – to kill. 

In these circumstances a cool scientist has to face his own concept 

of life. In the High Arctic you can have a real look into the motifs that 

have carried you this far. Are they really true descendants of the old 

explorers, who once penetrated into this barren, arctic desert? 

2010 | HDCAM, DigiBeta | 16:9 | Stereo | 80’ 

Director: Petteri Saario Script: Timo Humaloja, Petteri Saario Cinematography: 

Petteri Saario, Anton Leppälä Editing: Petteri Saario Music: Stefan 

Paavola, Antti Hytti Producer: Timo Humaloja Production company: Kinovid 

Productions Production support: The Finnish Film Foundation, AVEK Financing 

TV company: YLE TV2 Documentaries International sales: Kinovid Productions 

Petteri Saario 

Petteri Saario (born 1961) is a documentary filmmaker, who has specialized 

in depicting the endangered relationship between man and nature. Besides 

directing and producing he is also familiar with underwater and wildlife filming. 

Many of his films have been awarded both in Finland and abroad. He 

works as a manager and a producer in his own company DocArt. 

Main films: The Border 2009, Lapland – The Land of Saami and Salmon 

2009, Sergei the Healer 2008, The Finest Rivers of Finland 6 part series 2006, 

Sven Quijote 2006, The Sisu Stone 2004, When the Cod Ran Out 2004, Pearls 

of Baltic Sea 6 part series 2004, Village of Sleeping Beauty 2001, Wild, Wild 

Canary 2000. 

Petteri Saario 

Battle for the City 

Taistelu Turusta 

Battle for the City discusses the changing Finnish urban environment, how the old milieu was 

keenly destroyed to make way for modernism and modern construction. Another important 

question is the environmental policy of today’s Finland. To whom does the constructed environment 

around us belong, and who makes the decisions? 

2011 | DigiBeta | 16:9 | Stereo | 58’ 

Director: Jouko Aaltonen Script: Jouko Aaltonen, Rauno Lahtinen, Olli Vesala Cinematography: Pekka 

Aine Editing: Tuula Mehtonen Sound design: Martti Turunen Music: Markku Kopisto Producer: Jouko 

Aaltonen Production company: Illume Oy Production support: The Finnish Film Foundation, AVEK, 

Turku 2011 Fund Financing TV company: YLE TV2 Documentaries International sales: Illume Oy 

Jouko Aaltonen 

Jouko Aaltonen has directed numerous documentaries with subjects ranging from the Siberian Taiga 

to the diplomatic circles of Delhi. His feature-length documentary musical Revolution (2006) attracted 

record-breaking cinema audiences and won the Finnish Jussi award for the best documentary. Aaltonen 

is also a popular lecturer and author of study books on cinema and in 2006 he gained a Doctor 

of Arts degree. His latest films include: A Man from the Congo River (2010), Punksters & Youngsters 

(2008), Life Saver (2005), Ambassadors (2004), Kusum (2000). 

Director Jouko Aaltonen: 

I have always been interested in old photographs and postcards that depict cities that I know well. 

There is something familiar but also something weird and even ghostly. The captured moment – the 

people walking on the street and the vehicles in the photograph have inevitably disappeared. Often 

the buildings seen in the pictures seem such a natural part of the milieu that it is hard to imagine the 

places without them. When comparing these pictures to the present, one notices how temporary even 

the finest buildings may be. 

Why has so much old and precious been demolished here in Finland? These questions spring to my 

mind as I stand and look at the old photographs at the main market square in Turku, my childhood 

hometown. 

The oldest photograph of Finland was taken in Turku and it potrays the historically and architecturally 

unique House of Nobel in Uudenmaankatu. It too was demolished in the heat of the sixties – the 

building is gone, only the photograph remains. There are many stories related to the extinct buildings 

in Turku, and I wish to tell these stories to the film’s viewer. I would also like to bring the old City of 

Turku back to life through cinematic means. 

The more I study these stories, the more I am bewildered by the dominating mindset of the time. 

New buildings were constructed rapidly in post-War Finland, people craved for something new and 

modern. It was a project of a whole generation – the businessmen, the decision-makers, the ordinary 

citizens and the architects were all part of it. Apartments and jobs were needed, and people believed 

in the continuous economy and growth of the city – everything old was to be disposed. The Turku 

Cathedral, the Turku Castle and the Handicrafts Museum were sufficient enough representations of 

the old city. It was thought that the city was a machine made for living, constantly in change. 

The lifetime of a building would be a few decades – at most. The increasing 

number of cars was a positive phenomenon and the ideas for city planning 

were copied from Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. One of the goals of my 

film is to reason and comprehend – but not to accept. 

The film is a story of Turku, but just as well it could take place in any 

other city in Finland; Helsinki, Tampere, Oulu or Hämeenlinna for example. 

The sorry tale unfolds similarly in many other cities and therefore the theme 

is common. This is not just a film for and about the citizens of Turku. Maybe 

we can learn something through these stories. 

Jouko Aaltonen 


Barzakh 

Canned Dreams 

Canned Dreams is a film about workers and their dreams on the journey of a canned 

food product. 

In our film, we build a portrait of ordinary workers through their own, personal 

stories from multiple cultures. We hear them telling about the most important 

moments in their life, and the dreams that would make their own world a better 

place. All this happens in a frame of following the route of a tin can which starts 

it’s journey from the other side of the world and travels all across Europe. In this 

film the beauty of humanity is seen through working hands. 

2011 | 35mm, HDCAM, DigiBeta | 1:1,85 | Dolby 5.1 | 52’ and 80’ 

Barzakh 

In a Chechen city recovering after the war, a man disappears. As daily life goes 

on, those in search are drawn into a world where encounters with diviners and legal 

advisors, with the torturers and the tortured, with secret prisons and mythical 

lakes all become commonplace. When the disappeared do return in dreams, they 

are said to come from Barzakh – a land between the living and the dead. 

Finland/Lithuania | 2011 | DigiBeta, 35mm | 16:9 | Dolby | 59’ 

Director: Mantas Kvedaravicius Script: Mantas Kvedaravicius Cinematography: Mantas 

Kvedaravicius Additional photography: Ahmed Gisaev, Zarema Mukusheva Editing: 

Mantas Kvedaravicius Editing supervisor: Timo Linnasalo Editing assistant: Mindaugas 

Galkus Editing consultant: Giedrius Zubavicius Sound design: Tero Malmberg Producer: 

Aki Kaurismäki, Mantas Kvedaravicius Production company: Sputnik Oy Co-production: 

Extimacy Films Production support: The Finnish Film Foundation Financing TV company: 

YLE TV2 Documentaries International sales: The Match Factory GmbH 


Mantas Kvedaravicius was born in Birzai, Lithuania in 1976. He holds 

a Master’s Degree in cultural anthropology from the University of 

Oxford and is currently completing his PhD dissertation and a book 

manuscript on the affects of pain at the University of Cambridge. 

Kvedaravicius has taught university courses on religion, law, and 

political theory in New York, and since 2006 he has been conducting 

research on torture and disappearances in the North Caucasus. 

Barzakh is his first film. Kvedaravicius is also an underwater 

archaeologist. He lives in Lithuania raising his two children. 


Director: Katja Gauriloff Script: Katja Gauriloff, Joonas Berghäll and Jarkko T. Laine Cinematography: 

Heikki Färm, Tuomo Hutri Editing: Jukka Nykänen Sound design: Peter Albrechtsen 

Music: Karsten Fundal Producer: Joonas Berghäll Production company: Oktober Oy 

Production support: The Finnish Film Foundation, AVEK, MEDIA programme, Nordisk Film 

& TV Fund Financing TV company: YLE TV2 Documentaries, ARTE, RTP, NRK, TG4, Noga 

Communications International sales: Deckert Distribution GmbH | Heino Deckert 

Katja Gauriloff 

Katja Gauriloff was born in 1972 in Inari. She has studied filmmaking at the Tampere University 

of Applied Sciences, School of Art and Media (2000–2004). She has been involved 

in filmmaking since 1998. Today she is a film director and part-owner of the Oktober Oy 

production company. 

Selected filmography: 

A Shout into the Wind documentary, 2007 

Director Katja Gauriloff: 

It was the first time in my life that I worked at a factory. My job was to package sausages 

on a conveyor belt. The work was physically demanding and monotonous. Once an hour 

we had a seven-minute break. There was just enough time to run to the break room for a 

cup of coffee. Those were the best moments at the job, sitting in the break room where 

the factory ladies, some of whom had worked there at the same job for 30 years, were 

having a quick coffee and a cigarette. I came from Lapland, so I didn’t always understand 

what they were saying in their old Helsinki slang, but the stories were pretty racy. I kept 

quiet, listened and soaked in their life experiences, dreams and wishes. 

Now, almost 20 years later, I find myself in the Brazilian Amazonas at one of the largest 

open mine areas in the world. I sit there on 

the rocks and people around me work really 

hard for their lives. I listen to the stories and 

dreamsof a woman around my age, who has 

worked all her life in the slavery system of 

the mines. Even though our worlds are very 

different, I am amazed how similar and 

universal our dreams are all around the world. 

Katja Gauriloff 

Canned Dreams 


Sodankylä Forever/The Century of the Cinema 

Sodankylä Forever 

Elokuvan vuosisata | Sodankylä ikuisesti 

Christmas Men 

The Midnight Sun Film Festival – a strange and celebrated film festival in an unlikely 

place, far north in Lapland. The cinema dialogue of all time: the twentieth 

century as told by great filmmakers. The birth stories of films reveal histories 

lived, stories from childhood and the early years “before I became a filmmaker”. 

The special strength of the film is the dialogue of the most notable persons of the 

East and the West that grows out of the material, an encounter that conveys the 

starkly different working conditions, and yet the determination over the necessity 

of the shared human themes and challenges. Great movies are born out of innumerable 

origins. The complete Sodankylä Forever series consists as well of three 

one-hour features with themes of light, time, and the experience of the first films 

of our lives. 

Featuring, among others: Samuel Fuller, Michael Powell, Jacques Demy, 

Claude Sautet, Robert Parrish, Milos Forman, Abbas Kiarostami, Joseph H. 

Lewis, Jonathan Demme, Youssef Chahine, Francesco Rosi, Dino Risi, Jafar 

Panahi, Francis Ford Coppola, Sergio Sollima, Ivan Passer, Miklós Jancsó, Amos 

Gitai, Marlev Hutsiev, Jerzy Kawalerowicz, John Boorman, Ettore Scola, Vittorio 

de Seta, Elia Suleiman. 

2010 | Digibeta (pal) | DVD (pal) | 4:3 | Stereo | 90’ 

Director: Peter von Bagh Script: Peter von Bagh Cinematography: Arto Kaivanto Editing: 

Petteri Evilampi Sound design: Martti Turunen Producer: Ilkka Mertsola & Mark Lwoff 

Production company: Nosferatu Oy Production support: AVEK Financing TV company: 

YLE TV1 International sales: Nosferatu Oy 

Christmas Men 

Joulumiehet 

According to a Finnish saying, there are three phases in the life of a Finnish man: 

He believes in Santa Claus. He doesn’t believe in Santa Claus. He is Santa Claus. 

Christmas Men is a documentary film about four ordinary Finnish men who 

work as Santas. Each has his reasons to become a Santa. In the film being Santa 

is the one thing that ties these men’s life stories together. The film shows a cold, 

dark country where moments of fragile happiness are scarce, and thus precious. 

Absurd humour and melancholy are present. Gradually, the themes of the film are 

revealed: remorse, atonement, love. 

Peter von Bagh 

The Count (feature film, 1973) 

Year 1952 (feature length documentary, 1980) 

The Last Summer 1944 (feature length documentary, 1992) 

The Year 1939 (feature length documentary, 1993) 

The Blue Song: The Cultural History of Finland since 1917 

(12 parts, 2003–2004) 

Helsinki Forever (feature length documentary, 2008) 

A Director’s Journey to Humanness – 

The Story of Mikko Niskanen (3 parts – three hours) 

Sodankylä Forever / The Century of the Cinema 

(feature length documentary, 2010) 

Sodankylä Forever (3 parts – three hours 2010) 


2010 | DigiBeta, Blue-Ray | 16:9 | CH 1 & CH2 Stereo | 51’ 

Director: Miia Raivio Script: Miia Raivio Cinematography: Arttu Peltomaa (Jarkko 

Virtanen, Timo ”Juice” Huhtala, Kimmo Jaatinen) Editing: Mikko Sippola Sound design: 

Elina Hyvärinen Music: Antti Sipilä Producer: Markku Niska Production company: NBB 

Navy Blue Bird Oy Production support: The Finnish Film Foundation Financing TV 

company: YLE Co-productions, ARTE International sales: NBB Navy Blue Bird Oy 

Miia Raivio 

Miia Raivio is a Helsinki-based Finnish documentary film director, editor and writer. 

Her previous works as a director include: Keijupuisto – Home of the Homeless (2006), 

Making of Mental Finland (2009), Nameless | Finland Post Mortem (2009), History of 

Afro- Finland (2010). Christmas Men (2010) is part of her MA thesis from Aalto University, 

School of Art and Design. 

Director Miia Raivio: 

The most depressive thing to do, according to an English author, is to try tell a joke to a 

Finn. Finnish people do tend to take things seriously, and nothing in Finland is taken more 

seriously than Christmas. When I started to do research for the documentary film Christmas 

Men I got no help from the official Christmas County of the country: Lapland. 

An official told me, no-joke: ”What you are trying to tell in your film is that there exists 

more than one Santa. We all of course know that there is only one real Santa Claus and he 

lives in Rovaniemi.” In Finland, and especially in Lapland, Santa is the central figure of tourism 

industry. 

But he is more than that. In my film, I follow four ordinary Finnish men who work as 

Santas during Christmas Eve. In our country Christmas is the most important festivity of 

the year, and Santa Claus has a crucial role: he brings the presents to the children. Santa 

is often the father (or brother or uncle) of the family, but there are many ordinary Finnish 

men who work as Santas and can be booked to pay a visit at Christmas Eve. There’s something 

in the whole Santa tradition that interests me: once a year grown up men dress up 

as fairy tale figures in this cold, northern no-nonsense country. And the men in my film, 

well, they don’t do it just for fun but for more, 

shall we say serious reasons: for money, 

for not to get drunk, for love, for forgiveness. 

And that creates moments that are both 

tragic and comic – the essence of Finnish 

Christmas, if you ask me. 

Century of the Cinema 

Miia Raivio 


A City in Two Parts 



Jaettu kaupunki 

Three years ago Sedu Koskinen, a succesful 

nightclub owner from Helsinki 

went back to his home town Valkeakoski 

(20 000 inhabitants). His childhood 

dream was to recreate the legendary 

football club FC Haka again and 

raise the team back into glory. 

Valkeakoski is one of those cities in 

which the Finnish welfare state was 

born based on the forest industry and 

the paper mills. Now the paper mills 

have gone to South America and the 

people are looking for new ways to earn 

their living. Soccer could be one option, 

but what are the other ones? 

Pekka Lehto’s film A City in Two Parts 

is crowded by people who have memories, 

small businesses, dreams and plans 

for the future in this interesting city. 

2010 | DigiBeta | 1,66 | Stereo | 52’ 

Director: Pekka Lehto Script: Pekka Lehto, 

Mika Purola Cinematography: Teppo Högman, 

Mika Purola, HP Vitikainen Editing: 

Jussi Rautaniemi Sound design: Janne 

Jankkeri, Laura Kuivalainen Music: Lasse 

Enersen Producer: Pauli Pentti Production 

company: First Floor Productions Oy Production 

support: The Finnish Film Foundation, 

AVEK Financing TV company: YLE TV2 

Documentaries International sales: First 

Floor Productions Oy 

Pekka Lehto 

Pekka Lehto (born 1948) has directed for 

example the documentary films Brothers of 

the Forest, The Real McCoy, Boy Hero 001, 

The Temple, Alone, Nine Ways to Approach 

Helsinki, Swastika and Their Age. His films 

have won many prizes, been broadcasted internationally 

and some have been released 

theatrically. He has also directed the feature 

films Game Over, 

Tango Cabaret and 

The Well, and 

together with Pirjo 

Honkasalo the films 

Da Capo, 250 Grams, 

Flame Top and 

The First 

Co-operative ’39. 

Pekka Lehto 


The Story of Mikko Niskanen 

Ohjaaja matkalla ihmiseksi – Mikko Niskasen tarina 

Peter von Bagh’s A Director’s Journey To Humanness is a unique, quintessentially 

Finnish documentary triptych. With its three one-hour episodes, it paints a 

detailed picture of Mikko Niskanen (1929–1990), the director of The Boys, 

Eight Deadly Shots and Gotta Run! 

Mikko Niskanen was the intuitive seer of Finnish cinema, one of the most subtle 

portrayers of the Finnish countryside – perhaps even the last one with such a profound 

understanding of this particular area. He was also a masterly portrayer of the 

youth and a very colourful character in modern culture: a man who stirred up an 

array of emotions – often the most extreme ones. He was a man of genius, one of a 

kind: often uneven in his work, always unpredictable and even callous as a person. 

The documentary reveals the hidden until now: Niskanen’s works, created over 

a period of three decades, form a cinematographic autobiography rarely seen in the 

Finnish film scene. Almost insidiously, the films cover all the focal points of the 

director’s personal journey on earth. 

There are two main themes in the works of Mikko Niskanen: the countryside 

and the youth. The theme of countryside crept into his films quite surreptitiously, 

painted with small strokes – and, at first, almost in an ironic light. Another theme, 

youth, was a central one right from the beginning (in The Boys). Later on, the 

themes of countryside and youth meshed seamlessly with each other. 

Episode 1 of the documentary sheds light on Mikko Niskanen’s childhood and 

adolescence, introducing his films of the 1960s, in which the director fixed his gaze 

first on war, then on youth and the sentiments of his contemporaries. Episode 3 

of the documentary deals with the works and life of the director in the 1970s and 

1980s. In between those two, Episode 2 focuses entirely on Eight Deadly Shots, the 

magnum opus of Mikko Niskanen, in which the boundaries between the director’s 

life and his art faded away. This masterpiece undisputedly epitomises all the feelings 

of grief and compassion that can only be reached by the most profound art. 

A Director’s Journey to Humanness – The Story of Mikko Niskanen 


The Story of Mikko Niskanen 

Peter von Bagh’s cinematographic 

portrayal grows into an emotional voyage 

through the crucial years of Finnish 

modern history: a country in transition, 

and the tragedy of the dignified 

countryside in the process of disapparition. 

The film contains unique 

material from Mikko Nis kanen’s home 

archives, deleted scenes from his films, 

as well as interviews with his friends, 

family and colleagues. 

2010 | DigiBeta | 4:3 | Stereo | 

Part 1: 59’07”, Part 2: 57’20”, Part 3: 56’24” 

Director: Peter von Bagh Script: Peter von 

Bagh Cinematography: Arto Kaivanto 

Editing: Petteri Evilampi Sound design: 

Martti Turunen Producers: Ilkka Mertsola 

& Mark Lwoff Production company: Nosferatu 

Oy Production support: The Finnish 

Film Foundation Financing TV company: 

YLE TV2 Documentaries International 

sales: Nosferatu Oy 


Selected filmography 

The Count (feature film, 1973) 

Year 1952 (feature length 

documentary, 1980) 

The Last Summer 1944 (feature 

length documentary, 1992) 

The Year 1939 (feature length 


The Blue Song: The Cultural History of 

Finland since 1917 (12 parts, 2003–2004) 

Helsinki Forever (feature length 


Sidankylä Forever /The Century of the 

Cinema (feature length documentary, 

2010) 

Sodankylä Forever (3 parts – 

three hours, 2010) 



Forever Yours 

Forever Yours 

Ikuisesti sinun 

Forever Yours is a documentary film 

about love and loss. Children in foster 

care yearn for their parents and the 

children’s parents grieve for the loss of 

their children. Foster parents, pressed 

to the limits of their own capabilities, 

attempt to make up for the lack 

of intimacy and the effects caused by 

social stress. Day-to-day life moves 

the children and adults from one place 

to another; they become attached to 

each other and then have to part once 

again. These children are, in truth, on 

loan only. They adapt themselves and 

grow up, but will they ever be able to 

trust, let alone love, in the future? 

Director Mia Halme: 

How important is biology and shared history 

when we love our children? After following 

children who have been taken into 

care, I assume that there is not anyone 

who could repair the damaged biological 

bond between the child and the parent. 

Anyway, I have noticed with relief that, if 

the child is allowed to show his hate towards 

the dominant life conditions and at 

the same time becomes accepted by an 

adult, it can temper the grief. 

This is a story that could have happened 

to any of us, as a child or a parent, 

if we had faced troubled enough circumstances. 

The Good Survivor 

(working title) 

16 years after the most comprehensive 

genocide since the Second World War, 

Rwanda is still today is a country with 

scars so deep that it’s hard to comprehend. 

The memory of the massacre in 

1994, where one sixth of the country’s 

population was killed in three months, 

still casts a long shadow. 

The Good Survivor is a poetic documentary 

film about the time after. The 

film depicts the life of five characters 

during the genocide memorial month 

held every April. Burdened and grateful 

by being the ones who survived, 

everyone of them have their own ways 

to get from one day to another. Praying, 

grieving, remembering, escaping 

into drugs. 

The Good Survivor is a song for all 

the victims of any kind of violence. It 

shows what is left of a human being 

after going through the worst imaginable 

and asks if it is possible to ever be 

whole again. 

Finland/Rwanda 2011 | DigiBeta | 16:9 | 

Dolby Stereo | 52’ 

Director: Iris Olsson & Yves Niyongabo 

Script: Iris Olsson Cinematography: Iris 

Olsson Editing: Oskari Korenius Sound 

design: Toni Teivaala & Kimmo Vänttinen 

Producer: Iris Olsson, Claes Olsson Production 

company: Oy Nordic Film Pool 

Ltd Production support: The Finnish Film 

Foundation, AVEK Financing TV company: 

Yle TV2 Documentaries International 

Sales: Oy Nordic Film Pool Ltd 

Filmography: 

Iris Olsson: Between Dreams 2010, 

Summerchild 2007 

Yves Niyongabo: Maibobo 2010 

2011 | HD master, DigiBeta | 1.85:1 | 

Dolby Digital | 70’–80’ 

Yves Niyongabo and Iris Olsson 

Director: Mia Halme Script: Mia Halme 

Cinematography: Peter Flinckenberg, Anssi 

Leino Editing: Samu Heikkilä Sound design: 

Kirka Sainio Music: Timo Hietala Producer: 

Sonja Lindén Production company: 

Avanton Productions Oy Production support: 

The Finnish Film Foundation, AVEK, 

The Church Media Foundation KMS, ME- 

DIA Programme of the European Union, 

The Finnish Cultural Foundation Financing 

TV company: YLE Co-productions International 

sales: Avanton Productions Oy 

Mia Halme 

Mia Halme is a director of creative documentaries. 

The need for love and finding 

a family, either physical or psychological, 

have been the themes of her films: 

Big Boy (2007), Family of One (2005), 

Mother Brave (2002), Carnival Spirit 

(2002), Relatively Speaking (2001) and 

Erotic Vivica (1999). 

Mia Halme 

The Good Survivor (working title) 


The Finnish Legion of Murmansk Helsinki Twilight 1984 

The Finnish Legion of 

Murmansk 

Muurmannin legioona 

After the Finnish Civil War in the 

spring 1918, almost 1 200 Finnish 

communists, ’Reds’, fled hunger and 

the fear of revenge from the Whites to 

the Viena area in Soviet Union’s North 

Karelia. The English Major General F. 

C. Poole initiated a Red Finnish Legion, 

which he placed under command 

of the Canadian Officer R. B. Burton, 

stationed at the town of Kandalaksha 

in Karelia. 

The Red Finns joined the Finnish 

Legion of Murmansk, which was made 

up of people from diverse backgrounds. 

Some of them were Reds who had fled 

together with their wives and children, 

some were lumberjacks, while others 

were plain adventurers. 

Whatever the background, they all 

wore the same uniform and obeyed 

the strict command of His Majesty’s 

discipline. The Red Finns didn’t need 

to fight against Bolsheviks’ troops, but 

they had to defend the Murman railway 

line against the Finnish Whites 

and the possible invasion of German 

troops from Finland. Legionaries ended 

up in a situation where their loyalty 

and ideology was put to test. 


Director: Seppo Rustanius Script: Seppo 

Rustanius, Olli Soinio Cinematography: 

Pekka Aine Editing: Timo Linnasalo 

Sound design: Martti Turunen Music: 

Perttu Kivilaakso Producer: Jouko Aaltonen 

Production company: Illume Oy 

Production support: The Finnish Film 


YLE TV2 Documentaries International 

sales: Illume Oy 

Seppo Rustanius 

During the last 30 years Seppo Rustanius 

has written and directed several documentary 

films about the Finnish Civil War, the 

history of Russian Karelia, singers, theatre 

and history of Finnish civilization. Some 

of his latest documentaries are Victims 

1918 (2008), Over the Ice (2005), Karelian 

Terror (2002), Accusations Against the 

Utopian (2001) and Red Orphans in White 

Finland (1999). 

Helsinki Twilight 1984 

Timanttikoirien vuosi 1984 

Helsinki Twilight 1984 takes us back in 

time into the fascinating period between 

the years 1979–1985, when Helsinki 

and the rest of Finland moved 

towards an increasingly diverse and 

free social climate, pioneering beautiful 

boys in makeup and fancy girls. 

During this time new street-level 

phenomena such as small magazines, 

pirate radio and independent fashion 

began to blend into Finnish society 

– new clubs were set up, new art forms 

were born – and finally people felt they 

were works of art themselves. 

Helsinki was like Berlin between 

the wars for a period that lasted for no 

longer than a blink. It was full of ideas, 

encounters between different groups 

of people and 24h partying with the 

Cold War and what George Orwell 

had described in 1984 hovering on 

the background. Dark, deep shades, 

ominous music, ’pale boys’, vampires 

and other creatures of the night represented 

a world of a new human being; 

new romantics, new gothic – new vision. 

Representing the birth of the European, 

international, and ultimately 

universal citizen. This movement also 

paved the way for the internationally 

known Finnish goth bands, such as 

HIM and The 69 Eyes. 

duction support: The Finnish Film Foudation, 

The Finnish Performing Music Promotion 

Centre ESEK, The Foundation for the 

Promotion of Finnish Music LUSES, Heltech 

Audiovisual Media Financing TV company: 

YLE Teema International sales: Illume Oy 

Pete Europa (Petri Hakkarainen) 

Pete Europa graduated from the Helsinki 

University of Art and Design with a degree 

in Film Directing. He works as a director 

and scriptwriter. During the last years he 

has been writing some major series for 

TV. First Halosen harharetket (Yle Teema 

2004–2005), a larger social series about 

the deep structure of Finnish society, and 

then a major TV1 series The New Song of 

Väinämöinen (TV1 2010), which is a new 

version of the Finnish National epic Kalevala. 

Director Pete Europa: 

It is very interesting to be able to see children 

grow, and the documentary film Helsinki 

Twilight 1984 is a sort of a child. It is a 

love child, a wanted child, and increasingly 

it seems it is also a needed child. Very often 

we need a trigger; an event, a person, 

an accident to see more or to change the 

course of our lives. Somehow I have a feeling 

that ‘Helsinki Twilight 1984’ has some 

potential to be that trigger. Maybe it will 

give people a feeling of self esteem. Or it 

may inspire people to see how we form 

a chain of events, a continuation of a European 

art form, simply by existing – or 

through more conventional art forms. 

After finishing the film I started reading 

Simon Reynolds’ excellent book Rip it Up 

and Start Again – Post-punk 1978 – 1984, 

and I was amazed of the fact how deeply 

the Helsinki scene was rooted in the same, 

international wave of the post-punk era. 

There is also a quotation on the cover from 

Simon Armitage “…reminds us of the reality 

and relevance of the MOST EXHILARATING 

moment in Britain’s pop/rock history”. 

It is a meaningful sentence, and if it is even 

partly true you can consider that the ideas, 

It was a barren ground, grey, sad, desolate 

territory for souls that were seeking 

something more liberating and inspiring. 

That is why our significant years from 

around 1979–1985 were fully loaded, bursting 

with energy, inspiration, in an energetic 

and active “collective” from which sprouted 

numerous new beginnings. 

The value of photography as an art form 

rose and it became an accepted art form. 

Jorma Uotinen championed Finnish modern 

dance that now reached international 

standards for the first time in history. In 

theatre there was a revolt: new forms of 

rebellious and strong physical theatre were 

born, and actors also appeared on the club 

scene. 

The very first independent radio station 

was founded in Helsinki, and suddenly 

female artists begun shooting to fame. 

Men started wearing make up and stylish 

costumes which was very radical in ’postsoviet’ 

Finland. The first video cameras 

came to the shops and the first Finnish rock 

videos were shot. This colourful whirlwind 

of events and new ideas was very much 

centred around the new clubs that were 

started in Helsinki. Previously there were no 

real clubs; indie, new wave, artsy and special 

clubs were all born during ’79–’85. 

It was in 1981 when the first “Futurist” 

disco was arranged on an island near central 

Helsinki, and soon after were launched 

the Einstein A Go Go, a cabaret club, The 

Batcave all-night parties and the Bela Lugosi 

club, where you had to dress up all in black. 

Then a line of new clubs followed: Club 77, 

Cha Cha Club, Zebra Club, Club Berlin etc. 

– but the most intensive period in Helsinki 

was between those years 1979 – 1985. 

Was there a call for the film Helsinki 

Twilight 1984? Yes, I think that we needed 

it very much. But it is still only scratching 

the surface as there was more, much more. 

However, I firmly believe that some of the 

essential issues and the spirit of that time 

has definitely been captured in this film. 

2010 | DigiBeta, DVD | 16:9 | Stereo | 76’45’’ 

people and themes in the Helsinki Twilight 

1984 documentary are equally meaningful 

Director: Pete Europa (Petri Hakkarainen) 

and true. Possibly even more so in Finland 

Script: Pete Europa (Petri Hakkarainen) 

than in the UK, because the British art and 

Cinematography: Arttu Peltomaa Editing: 

street culture has always been very strong, 

Kari Elovuori Sound design: Erkka Vepsä 

but in Finland it was almost a completely 

Music: Pekka Hakala Producer: Jouko Aal- 

new beginning to my generation, after the 

Seppo Rustanius 

tonen Production company: Illume Oy Pro- 

explosion of punk. 

Pete Europa 


The Hunt 

Kaskinen 

Kaskö 

Foundation, Swedish Cultural Foundation 

in Finland, Association Konstsamfundet, 

MediaCity Financing TV company: YLE 

The Hunt 

Jahti 

The Hunt is instigated by the sudden 

friction in the well preserved facade of 

modern urban society, caused by – the 

city rabbit. It brings out a new element 

in the relationship of man and nature, 

which has been in crisis for decades. 

In the city of Helsinki many people 

have taken on to this new phenomena 

and become city hunters using bows, 

laser weapons, traps, even brutal clubbing 

is part of their repertoire. But 

this hunt it is also organized by the 

society which tries to deal with this 

threat caused by sweet rabbits which 

used to be pets, but were released outdoors 

when their owners lost interest 

in them. 

The city of Helsinki, different 

organizations, real estate companies 

and many others suffer from the damages 

caused by these rabbits. And the 

society starts a counter attack, even 

the parish of Helsinki decides to buy 

a shotgun to defend the gravestones 

from falling down. The city wants to 

eliminate this unnatural animal in 

the urban environment – and it wants 

to make it as a final solution. But it 

seems to be weaker than the rabbits. 

City rabbits have added a new 

chapter in the long story of naturealienated 

man and his attempt to create 

a lifestyle which is controlled only 

by man himself. 

Production support: The Finnish Film 


YLE TV2 International sales: Kinovid 

Productions 

Jukka Eggert 

Jukka Eggert is a documentary filmmaker 

who started working as an editor in 1996. 

He has a Bachelor’s degree in culture and 

art and during his studies he spent an 

academic year as an exchange student in 

Moscow, at the Gerasnimov Institute of 

Cinematopography, VGIK. Today he works 

as an editor in a production company in 

Helsinki and as a documentary filmmaker. 

Filmography: 

Lauri 1998 

Migration Flight 2005 20 min, YLE TV1 

The Past Generation 2009 52 min YLE 

TV2 

After 30 years of faithful duty Lena 

receives a gold pin, but by then she 

has already been laid off. No one 

could foresee that the successful cellulose 

factory would be closed, but it 

was. Lena and her coworkers, who 

were employed straight out of school 

when the factory was new, are all 

freefalling. 

What do you do when you lose 

your job and there is no other employment 

available? Do you sell your 

house, move away, retrain yourself, 

change trades, go into early retirement 

or simply grab your severance 

pay and build a bloody big garage? 

Kaskinen is a documentary film 

that tells the survival story of Lena, 

Kari, Tom, Erkki and Ann-Charlotte 

during the two years that follow the 

closure of Metsä-Botnia’s cellulose 

factory situated in Kaskinen, the 

smallest city in Finland. 


Director: Ulrika Bengts Script: Ulrika 

Bengts Cinematography: Jan Nyman 

Editing: Tuomo Leino Sound design: 

Risto Iissalo Music: Peter Hägerstrand 

Producer: Mats Långbacka Production 

company: Långfilm Productions Finland 

Oy Production support: The Finnish Film 

FST5, SVT International sales: Ab Interprod 

Oy 

Ulrika Bengts 

Ulrika Bengts (born 1962) has directed 

approximately thirty documentaries, short 

films, and TV series as well as theatre 

productions and radio dramas. She is best 

known for her works Riksväg Åtta (1992) 

and Nu är du Hamlet!(2002), which won 

many awards internationally, and the 

dramatisations Fling (2004) and Avsked 

(2010). Her first feature film Iris will have 

its premiere in the autumn 2011. 

Ulrika Bengts 


Director: Jukka Eggert Script: Jukka 

Eggert Cinematography: Jukka Eggert, 

Daniel Lindholm Editing: Mikko 

Savi nainen Sound design: Heikki Innanen 

Producer: Timo Humaloja Production 

company: Kinovid Productions 

Jukka Eggert 

Kaskinen 


Lemmi’s Love 

Look At Me 

Omaa luokkaansa 

“Look at me is a depiction of steadfast 

caring and love that speaks through 

actions. Everyday patience and a belief 

in human change by the force of good 

are given their due in the film.” 

– Judge’s statement, 

Church Media Foundation’s Award 2010 

school shootings. Bullying as well 

as extreme forms of violence such as 

school shootings are subject matters of 

this film. 

2010 | HDCAM, Digibeta, Blu-ray | 16:9 | 

Dolby Digital stereo & 5.1 | 

67’ and 58’ version 

Director: Iiris Härmä Script: Iiris Härmä 

Cinematography: Hannu-Pekka Vitikainen 

Editing: Tuula Mehtonen Sound design: 

Janne Laine Music: Marko Nyberg 

Producer: Visa Koiso-Kanttila Production 

company: Guerilla Films Ltd Production 

support: The Finnish Film Foundation, 

AVEK, Church Media Foundation Financing 

TV company: YLE TV1 International sales: 

Guerilla Films Ltd 

Lemmi’s Love 

Lemmin rakkaus 

A young Estonian girl called Lemmi 

got married to a Defense League officer 

in December 1939, when Soviet 

Russia was already preparing to occupy 

Estonia for the first time. After the 

occupation in summer 1940 Lemmi’s 

husband was criminalized because of 

his former duty in the independent 

Estonia. 

When Germany attacked the Soviet 

Union in summer 1941 the Soviet regime 

tried to arrest Lemmi’s husband, 

who was hiding in the forests with 

other patriots. When they could not 

find him, the Soviets arrested Lemmi 

and sent her to Russian prison camps 

in Siberia. 

The German occupiers of Estonia 

then nominated Lemmi’s husband 

the chief of the Estonian organization 

Omakaitse in the Läänemaa county 

to work for “clearing Läänemaa of 

communists”. When the Soviets came 

back in 1944 he escaped by boat to 

Sweden as well as thousands of other 

Estonians. 

In 1959 Lemmi finally got back 

from Siberia to the Soviet Estonia. She 

was a mother of five fatherless children, 

and still regarded as an “enemy 

of the people”. Lemmi was not permitted 

to settle down in her home commune 

and she was called “fascist” by 

strange people. She died as a respected 

mother, worker and enthusiast of culture 

in 1990, when free winds were 

blowing in Estonia again. 

In the film Lemmi’s Love contemporary 

people tell their memories about 

Lemmi and the war, the deportations 

and the Soviet era. 

2010 | DigiBeta, DV CAM | 16:9 | 

Analogical Dolby Stereo | 58’ 

Director: Ville Mäkelä Script: Ville Mäkelä 

Cinematography: Ville Mäkelä Editing: 

Elar Järvet, Ville Mäkelä Sound design: 

Tuomas Sallinen Producer: Tuomas Sallinen 

Production company: Frameworks 

Production House Production support: 

AVEK Financing TV company: YLE 

TV1 International sales: Frameworks 

Production House, Ville Mäkelä 

Ville Mäkelä 


(fiction films): 

Beyond the Law (1986) 

Hights Worth Dreaming (1988) 

Passions (1990) 

Director Ville Mäkelä: 

During World War II, Finland succeeded in 

keeping the enemies more or less behind 

the borders. That kept the war – complicated 

in any circumstances – far more simple 

for us than it turned out for the Estonians 

– for generations. I did not deeply understand 

this when I started to interview 

people of Läänemaa in Estonia, who were 

young when the war began. 

I was surprised by how willingly they 

were ready to speak to me. I felt like they 

had waited all their life for me to come. 

Maybe it was partly because of the familiarity 

between our nations, which share the 

same roots. But certainly it was because of 

the big silence that took place in the Western 

countries – including Finland – during 

the second Soviet occupation of Estonia 

since 1944. They were left alone for 50 

years. And it is peculiar how little we still 

know about their story, after 20 years of 

Estonia’s new independence. 

Starting in spring 2008, I filmed a lot 

and slowly began to understand some 

lines of the basic picture. Let Lemmi’s story 

be a sketch for that. 

Look At Me is a strong and touching depiction 

of today’s youth who are at the 

risk of becoming socially excluded due 

to their different learning skills, and a 

teacher who is trying to help a group 

of young people to complete their compulsory 

education and to support and 

guide them so that they can have trust 

in themselves and in their future. 

The story’s main character is Ulla, 

the teacher of a special needs class who 

has made a career as a drama teacher 

for children and young people. In her 

final year before retirement Ulla has 

taken up the challenge to lead this special 

group of eleven pupils. 

Look At Me uncovers the everyday 

life in school and reveals its dark sides. 

School-going is not pleasurable and 

inspiring for everyone, but an arduous 

journey with experiences of loneliness, 

bullying, frustration, insecurity 

and feelings of failure. This film challenges 

the taken-for-granted practices 

of compulsory schooling and shows 

an unusual way of being a secondary 

school teacher – a teacher who is truly 

present and in interaction with her students. 

Finnish schools are famous for outstanding 

results at the PISA tests (The 

Programme for International Student 

Assessment), but also widely reported 

Iiris Härmä 

M.A. Iiris Härmä was born in 1970 in 

Finland. Since 1996 she has worked as a 

producer, assistant director and director 

in several documentary films in her 

own Guerilla Films production company 

together with her husband and colleague 

Visa Koiso-Kanttila. Her latest film was 

You Live and Burn, 2007. 

Iiris Härmä 

Ville Mäkelä 

Look at Me 


Mama Africa 

Mama Africa 

Mama Africa 

Mama Africa is a documentary about 

the recently deceased South African 

icon Miriam Makeba. Miriam travelled 

with her powerful music around 

the world to spread her political message 

against racism and poverty and 

for equality and peace. Mama Africa 

is an homage to this extraordinary and 

impressive artist, who incarnates the 

voice and the hope of Africa. 

Miriam Makeba was an incredible 

person. She was the first African musician 

to win international stardom, 

and her music – that influenced artists 

across the globe – was always anchored 

in her traditional South African roots, 

as was her ceaseless message against 

racism and poverty. 

Miriam was forced into a life in exile, 

after exposing the harsh realities 

of apartheid for the first time internationally 

through her participation in 

the 1959 documentary Come Back Africa. 

Singing for John F. Kennedy and 

Marlon Brando, performing with Harry 

Belafonte, Nina Simone and Dizzie 

Gillespie, being married to Hugh 

Masekela and then to the ex-Black 

Panther leader Stokely Carmichael, her 

life was a tumultuous one. A life that 

always stood for truth and justice on 

behalf of oppressed people everywhere, 

most importantly for Africans, as a 

global campaigner against apartheid. 

Germany/South-Africa/Finland | 2011 | 

DCP, HDCAM, 35mm | 16:9 | 1:1.85 | Dolby 

Digital, 5.1 | 88’ and 52’ 


Paavo, a Life in Five Courses 

Director: Mika Kaurismäki Script: Mika 

Kaurismäki, Don Edkins Cinematography: 

Jacques Cheuiche, Eran Tahor, Martina 

Radwan, Frank Lehmann, Wolfgang Held 

Editing: Karen Harley Sound design: Uwe 

Dresch Music: Miriam Makeba etc. Producer: 

Rainer Kölmel Production company: 

Starhaus (Germany) Co-production: Marianna 

Films (Finland), Millennium Films 

(South-Africa) Production support: The 

Finnish Film Foundation, NRW Financing 

TV company: YLE TV2 Documentaries, 

ZDF/ARTE, SWR, ORF, SVT, NPS International 

sales: Fortissimo Films 



2010 Vesku from Finland 

2009 The House of Branching Love 

2008 Three Wise Men 

2006 Sonic Mirror 

2005 Brasileirinho 

2003 Honey Baby 

2002 Moro no Brasil 

1998 Los Angeles Without a Map 

1994 Tigrero – A Film That Was 

Never Made 

1991 Zombie & The Ghost Train 

1990 The Amazon 

1987 Helsinki Napoli – All Night Long 

1985 Rosso 

1982 The Worthless 

1980 The Liar 

Paavo, a Life in Five 

Courses 

Paavo, fem rätter och ett liv 

“I have four dogs, two donkeys and 

a wife in Paris and I need help with 

the household”, theater producer Lars 

Schmidt said to young Paavo Turtiainen 

at Helsinki airport in 1970. The 

wife was the actress Ingrid Bergman. 

Finnish farm boy Paavo Turtiainen 

is hired into the Parisian household of 

Swedish theatre producer Lars Schmidt 

and his wife, Ingrid Bergman. The couple 

“adopt” and train Paavo to navigate 

the rich and famous. Encouraged by 

Schmidt, Paavo moves to New York and 

becomes an acclaimed chef and event 

planner for high society. Along the way, 

Paavo learns to stand on his own feet. 

In the film Ingrid Bergman’s daughters, 

Isabella Rossellini and Pia Lindström, 

talk about their “brother” and 

Lars Schmidt’s son Kristian describes 

how it was growing up with the ever 

present Paavo. 

As a contrast to the hectic New 

York pace, we spend time in the relaxing 

Swedish archipelago, watch Paavo 

pick mushrooms in the Finnish forests 

and visit the railway station in the tiny 

Finnish town of Karis, where Paavo 

first encountered Ingrid Bergman – on 

a magazine cover. 

2010 | Blu-ray, HDCAM | 16:9 | 

AB stereo | 71’ 

Director: Hanna Hemilä Script: Hanna 

Hemilä Cinematography: Ilmo Lintonen 

Editing: Pentti Kakkori Sound design: Tero 

Malmberg Music: Dani Strömbäck Producers: 

Hanna Hemilä, Vesa Harju Production 

company: Handle Productions Oy Co-production: 

Whooper LLC Production support: 

AVEK, Swedish Cultural Foundation 

in Finland, Föreningen Konstsamfundet, 

The Swedish-Finnish Cultural Foundation 

Financing TV company: YLE FST5, SVT International 

sales: Handle Productions Oy 

Hanna Hemilä 

First time director Hanna Hemilä has produced 

award winning films for nearly 

two decades. She is currently working on 

Le Havre, a feature film directed by Aki 

Kaurismäki. Other films include Bad Family 

(Berlinale 2010); Varg, a Swedish-Finnish-Norwegian 

film (2008); Pelicanman 

(Berlinale 2004); Guarded Secrets (2004); 

Gold Fever in Lapland (1999); the animation 

series Tootletubs & Jyro (2001) and Urpo & 

Turpo (1996); the documentaries Tove and 

Tooti in Europe (2004) and Haru, the Island 

of the Solitary (1998). Hemilä received the 

Finnish State’s Art Award in 2001. 

Director’s notes 

I have been intrigued by the impact Bergman 

and Schmidt had on the adolescent 

Paavo – and vice versa. The time he worked 

for the couple has clearly had a tremendous 

impact on his personality as well as his career. 

In fact, many call Bergman and Schmidt 

Paavo’s “adoptive” parents. 

Another aspect about Paavo’s controversial 

life is the New York City lifestyle. The 

everyday life of the average New Yorker is 

far different from the media images. The 

extreme competitiveness of the city makes 

it a tough environment. My document 

serves as a behind-the-scenes journey. In 

contrast to the front-of-house glamour, we 

see the servant’s quarters, the narrow corridors, 

waste bags, buildings with impractical 

elevators and cramped work spaces. Creating 

and delivering seamless and fabulous 

arrangements, such as Paavo’s, requires a 

huge effort. 

Although Paavo has access to all areas, 

from the ‘stage’ door to the grand entrance, 

he has spent most of his life serving others 

and living by their rules. My intention 

has been to unveil which personality traits 

have led to Paavo’s success and what he has 

given up to get to where he is. I wanted to 

understand why so many powerful people, 

even those considered difficult or distant, 

continue to have confidence in Paavo. 

Hanna Hemilä 


Play God 

Play God 

When a talented group of dedicated filmmakers pour their hearts and souls into 

an innovative project, what can possibly go wrong? Well… everything. 

Play God is a humorous documentary that neither apologizes nor whines, but 

simply recounts, with brutal honesty, the story of a failed splatter film project. 

Through the director’s eyes we explore the dynamics of failure as he examines, 

step by step and without self-pity, how a man’s hopes and dreams can crumble before 

his very eyes. 

2010 | DigiBeta | 16:9 | Stereo | 39’ 

Director: Teemu Nikki Script: Teemu Nikki Cinematography: Jyrki Arnikari, Teemu Nikki, 

Mika Orasmaa Editing: Teemu Nikki Sound design: Sakari Salli Producer: Teemu Nikki 

Production company: It’s Alive Productions Production support: AVEK 

Financing TV company: YLE International sales: It’s Alive Productions 

Teemu Nikki 

2010 Play God, documentary 

2009 Mother Doesn’t Bowl Anymore, short film 

2008 Legacy, short film 

2007 A Mate, short film 

2006 The Opportunist, short film 

Teemu Nikki 

Reindeerspotting – Escape from Santaland 

Reindeerspotting – Pako Joulumaasta 

Jani, 19, has lived his entire life in the city of Rovaniemi in Northern Finland. For 

the last five years he’s done nothing but drugs. If you can smoke, swallow or shoot 

it up, he’s done it. His group of friends live within the society, yet isolated from it. 

All they know and care about is crime, getting high and messing around. 

Living in a small town is getting to Jani, but he hasn’t been able to leave, not 

even for a holiday. He’s certain he can kick the habit as soon as he gets away from 

Rovaniemi. If only he could make a break for it, get to Europe, someplace bigger. 

And wouldn’t you know it – Jani manages to steal a wad of cash and the journey 

begins. Stockholm makes his head spin around, as the railway station alone is bigger 

than all of Rova niemi. It’s the farthest he’s ever been from home. 

Jani finds a brand new lust for life and starts thinking about the past five years. 

Reaching the Mediterranean Sea, he takes his needle and breaks it in half on the 

coast of Sicily. But what happens then? Is it truly possible to change your way of 

life just like that? 

Reindeerspotting is a documentary feature from within the junkie community. 

The director has been documenting the life of his friends, where crime and 

intravenous drugs are an everyday occurrence. 

2010 | 35mm, DigiBeta, DCP | 16:9 (4:3 pillarbox) | Dolby Digital 5.1. – Stereo | 83’ 

Director: Joonas Neuvonen Script: Joonas Neuvonen, 

Sadri Cetinkaya, Venla Varha Cinematography: Joonas Neuvonen 

Editing: Sadri Cetinkaya Sound design: Joonas Jyrälä, 

Miia Nevalainen, Panu Riikonen Producer: Jesse Fryckman, 

Oskari Huttu Production company: Bronson Club Oy 

Production support: The Finnish Film Foundation, AVEK 

Financing TV company: YLE TV2 Documentaries 

International sales: Autlook Filmsales 

Joonas Neuvonen 

Joonas Neuvonen has no previous filmography. 

Joonas Neuvonen 

Play God 

Reindeerspotting 

Reindeerspotting 



Salla – Selling the Silence 

Salla – Selling the Silence is a creative documentary film. It witnesses the rise and 

fall of one family of entrepreneurs, the Kuukkanen family from Salla, Lap land, 

side-by-side with the current changes in the values of our society. In combining 

private and personal family memories with ongoing changes in the scenery, the 

documentary asks: How to avoid irreversible changes in the nature when earning 

your living? 

Salla – Selling the Silence is a journey to the North, past and present. Sometimes 

the journey can be surprising, sometimes sad, sometimes absurd in a black 

Finnish way. When the film asks: ”What is the price of the wilderness?” it is also 

a question of identity: Who you really are? What is your real nature? 

2010 | HD, DigiBeta | 16:9 | Stereo | 70’ 


Sinkkuelämän säännöt 

Director: Markku Tuurna Script: Tarja Kylmä & Markku Tuurna Cinematography: Jarkko T. 

Laine, Heikki Färm Editing: Kimmo Taavila Sound design: Kyösti Väntänen Music: Kimmo 

Pohjonen Producer: Markku Tuurna Production company: Filmimaa Oy Production support: 

The Finnish Film Foundation, AVEK, Nordisk Film & TV Fond Financing TV company: 

YLE, ARTE, SVT International sales: Filmimaa Oy 

A romantic documentary about love in a foreign city. Four Bulgarian emigrants 

in Helsinki; disillusioned with love, they decide to give themselves a task. In 12 

months, they need to find girlfriends in Helsinki. The men start a well-organized 

self-development and women hunting process. Internet dates, sport dates, courses 

in dancing etc. 

Still, love is always full of surprises. The past – especially ex-wives and ex-girlfriends 

– won’t leave the men in peace. And the present is also full of surprises especially 

while you’re on your way to a friend’s wedding: Why don’t all women put 

their photos on the dating sites of the Internet? Is sex a cure for solitude? And can 

anyone anywhere really get to know another person in 12 months? 

Markku Tuurna 

Filmmaker Markku Tuurna is renowned for his documentaries with 

a special social point of view (eg. a fox-farmer’s story in today’s 

high-tech Finland: One Hundred Generations 1999). His personal 

approach is evident in the feature films and TV series he has produced. 

In Salla – Selling the Silence the director takes a leap into a new field: 

He opens the family files, and wants to find out the truth about 

current changes in Lapland. 

Markku Tuurna 

Finland/Bulgaria 2010 | DCP, DigiBeta | 16:9 | Stereo | 79’ | Bulgarian, English, 

Finnish with English subtitles 

Director: Tonislav Hristov Script: Tonislav Hristov, Kaarle Aho Cinematography: Peter 

Flinckenberg Editing: Joona Louhivuori Sound design: Anne Tolkkinen Music: Petar 

Dundakov Producers: Kaarle Aho, Kai Nordberg Production company: Making Movies Oy 

Co-production: Agitprop (Bulgaria) Production support: The Finnish Film Foundation, 

AVEK, NFTF, Bulgarian Film Centre Financing TV companies: YLE TV1, NRK, Bulgarian 

National Television International sales: First Hand Films GmbH 


Tonislav Hristov was born in Vratza, northern Bulgaria, in 1978. 

In 1999 he moved to Finland. He has a MSC in computer engineering 

(2002) and a MA in filmmaking (2007). He has worked for years as a 

freelancer for YLE and has made several TV documentaries. His first 

documentary film Family Fortune was released in 2007. 





Silence and severity 

Steam of Life 

Miesten vuoro 

ARTE, SVT, ERR International sales: Films 

Transit International Inc. 

• PRIX EUROPA, Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg, 

October 2010, Category television 

documentary 

Silence and Severity 

Hiljaisuus ja ankaruus 

This documentary film is a journey into 

the Finnish culture of the last decades 

through the work and thoughts of 

one of its most exact interpreters, the 

artist Henry Wuorila-Stenberg. 

The documentary film Silence and 

Severity is a means to see the process of 

creation of Henry Wuorila-Stenberg 

and to understand his points of view 

and positions in his universal life experience. 

The credibility and universality 

of the dramatic events of the film are 

found in Henry’s artistic works. 

This is a film for those who love art 

in all its forms and also to those who 

are curious in general. 

Naked Finnish men in saunas speak 

straight from the heart and in the 

warmth of rusty stoves cleanse themselves 

both physically and mentally towards 

the film’s deeply emotional and 

un forgettable finale. 

The film travels through Finland 

joining men of all walks of life in many 

different saunas to let us hear their 

touching stories about love, death, 

birth and friendship; about life. In all 

its simpli city the camera records the 

raw and rare beauty of landscapes, 

saunas and men in almost magical pictures. 

The presence of the characters 

and the depth of their emotion reaches 

a limit where it is almost intolerable 

for the viewer to watch. Steam of Life 

reveals the men’s naked souls in an exceptionally 

intimate and poetic way. 

2010 | 35 mm, DigiBeta, HDCAM | 1:1,85 

(35mm), 16:9 Anamorphic (DigiBeta) | Dolby 

Digital 5.1, Dolby EX (HDCAM) | 84’ 

Directors: Joonas Berghäll, Mika Hotakainen 

Script: Joonas Berghäll, Mika Hotakainen 

Cinematography: Heikki Färm, Jani 

Kumpulainen Editing: Timo Peltola Sound 

design: Christian Christensen Music: Jonas 

Bohlin Producer: Joonas Berghäll Production 

company: Oktober Oy Co-production: 

Röde Orm Film AB Production support: 

Joonas Berghäll 

Joonas Berghäll (born 1977) has studied 

film producing (2000–2005) at the Tampere 

University of Applied Sciences, School 

of Art and Media. He has been involved in 

filmmaking since 1998. Today he is a film 

producer and owner of the Oktober production 

company. The documentary films 

The Smoking Room and A Shout into the 

Wind, which were produced by him, were 

awarded the State Quality Support for 

cinema productions in Finland in 2007 and 

2008. Besides of producing, Joonas also 

directs films. His latest work as a director 

is the documentary film Steam of Life directed 

with Mika Hotakainen. 

Mika Hotakainen 

Mika Hotakainen (born 1977) graduated 

as a fiction director in 2004 from Helsinki 

University of Applied Sciences, Stadia. Mika 

has been working in the television and 

film industry since 1998. He has directed 

the documentary films Freedom to Serve 

and Steam of Life, and the short fiction 

film Visitor. He is co-owner of the production 

company Oktober. 

Nominations: 

• Finnish submissions for the Academy 

Award for Best Foreign Language Film, 

February 2011 

• IDA Documentary Awards for Distin- 

• Nordic Council Film Prize, October 2010 

Awards: 

• Tampere Film Festival, Finland, March 

2010, National competition, Risto Jarva 

Award and Audience Award 

• Visions du Réel, Nyon/Switzerland, 

April 2010, International competition, 

Award of Interreligious Jury 

• Doc Aviv Film Festival, Tel Aviv/Israel, 

May 2010, Main prize, International 

competition 

• Planete Doc Review Film Festival, 

Warsaw/Poland, May 2010, Millenium 

Award 

• Silverdocs, Silversprings/Maryland/ 

USA, June 2010, Special Jury Mention 

• Pärnu Int. Documentary Film Festival, 

Pärnu/Estonia, July 2010, International 

competition Grand Prize 

• Dok Leipzig, Leipzig/Germany, October 

2010, Silver Dove 

• Doclisboa, Lisbon/Portugal, October 

2010, Universities Award 

2010 | DVCAM | 16:9 | Mono | 52’ 

The Finnish Film Foundation, AVEK, MEDIA 

Programme, NFTF, The Swedish Film In- 

guished Feature, December 2010 

• European Film Awards, PRIX ARTE, 

Director: Ali Lacheb Script: Ali Lacheb 

stitute Financing TV companies: YLE TV2, 

December 2010 

Mika Hotakainen and Joonas Berghäll 

Cinematography: Ali Lacheb Editing: Topi 

Heinonen Sound design: Ali Lacheb, Eraj 

Nasimov ja Topi Heinonen Music: Eraj 

Nasimov Producer: Ali Lacheb Production 

company: Oran Productions Production 

support: Central Art Archives, Church Media 

Foundation, AVEK, Arts Council of Finland 

International sales: Oran Productions 

Ali Lacheb 

selected filmography 

The Photographer Caj Bremer, 2010 | 

Jorma Puranen, 2010 | Kalevala elää, 2009 

| Fact and Fiction, 2009 | The destiny of 

Anna Ivanovna Pavlova, 2009 | Hommage 

to Juhani Kirpilä, 2009 | Tin Hinan – Portrait 

of an Artist in Sahara, 2007 | 

Ten Thousand Kisses – Portrait of the Artist, 

Painter and Writer Hannu Väisänen, 

2006 | The Drawer of the Soul – Portrait 

of the Artist and Painter Kuutti Lavonen, 

2003 | The Painter of the Dreams – Portrait 

of the Artist and Painter Risto Suomi, 

2001 | The Photographer of the Memory 

– Portrait of the 

Photographer 

Jorma Puranen, 2001 | 

The Eye and the Plume 

– Portrait of the artist 

of Lithography 

Erik Bruun, 2001 

Ali Lacheb 

Steam of Life 


The Unknown Woman 



Tuntematon emäntä 

The Unknown Woman depicts the reality of Finnish agriculture and forestry during the 

war years, when the home front relied entirely upon the work and endurance 

of the women. All farm work, caring for the children, woodcutting and other 

forestry operations were undertaken by the civilians, as the men in their prime 

were on the front. 

Until now the war effort of the rural women has not been portrayed in a 

knowledgeable film with emotional impact. The subject touches all modern-day 

Finns whether they live rurally or in towns. This is a matter of Finnish spiritual 

and financial inheritance, and familiarity with it is of the greatest importance. 

A nation that does not know its history cannot understand its present, let alone 

look into the future. Although the war as a topic has been dealt with, the important 

part the women played during the war in agriculture and forestry, and through that 

as the backbone of Finnish society has not been explored before. 

2011 | 35 mm, DCP | 1:75 | Dolby Digital | 78’ 

Director: Elina Kivihalme Script: Elina Kivihalme Cinematography: Jouko Seppälä Editing: 

Tuuli Kuittinen Sound design: Anne Tolkkinen Music: Anne Seppänen, Miro Mantere 

Producers: Taru Mäkelä and Jouko Seppälä Production company: Kinosto Oy Production 

support: The Central Union of Agricultural Producers and Forest Owners, The Finnish Film 

Foundation, AVEK, Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland, The Foundation of Foresters, 

The Church Media Foundation Financing TV company: YLE TV2 Documentaries International 

sales: Pirkanmaa Film Centre 

Elina Kivihalme 

Elina Kivihalme graduated from the Department of Film and Television of the The University 

of Industrial Design and Arts Helsinki UIAH in 1992. Since then she has worked as a director, 

scriptwriter and editor in several fiction and documentary films as well as TV projects. 

She has also worked in film education and as a film commissioner at at The Finnish Film 

Foundation from 2007 to 2008. 


fiction films: Voi hyvin, toivoo Saara (40’ 1992), Kansainvälistä meininkiä (15’ 1992). 

Director of the TV series Salatut elämät 1998–2001. 

documentary films: Gösta ”Göde” Sundqvist (40’), Silkki (30’ 1992), Virus – vaarallinen 

vieras sopuisa seuralainen (40’ 1989), the series Rakkauden tähden (10x30’ 2009). 

Director / journalist of the YLE TV1 programme Mediakomppania. 


Vesku 

Vesku from Finland is a film about Vesa-Matti Loiri alias Vesku, probably the most 

popular film and TV comedian in Finland. He has created a significant career also 

as a singer, performer and as a sportsman. He has recorded several albums from 

folk songs and couplets to pop and jazz. Some of his recordings are based on the 

lyrics of Eino Leino, the famous Finnish poet. During his unique career he has 

played in more than 60 films and recorded 30 albums. 

2010 | 35mm, DCP, HDCAM | 1:1.85, 16:9 | Dolby Digital 5.1 | 107’ 

Director: Mika Kaurismäki Script: Mika Kaurismäki Cinematography: Tahvo Hirvonen, 

Jari Mutikainen Editing: Jukka Nykänen Sound design: Joonas Jyrälä Producer: Mika Kaurismäki 

Production company: Marianna Films Oy Production support: The Finnish Film 

Foundation, AVEK, The Finnish Performing Music Promotion Centre ESEK Financing TV 

company: YLE TV2 Documentaries International sales: Marianna Films Oy 



2009 The House of Branching Love 

2008 Three Wise Men 

2006 Sonic Mirror 

2005 Brasileirinho 

2003 Honey Baby 

2002 Moro no Brasil 

1998 Los Angeles Without a Map 

1994 Tigrero – A Film that Was 

Never Made 

1991 Zombie & The Ghost Train 

1990 The Amazon 

1987 Helsinki Napoli – All Night Long 

1985 Rosso 

1982 The Worthless 

1980 The Liar 


Director Elina Kivihalme: 

My grandmother became a widow soon after the war had ended. She had nine children, a 

little house and only one cow. I have often wondered how on earth my granny managed 

it all? First, her husband was in the war for five years and he returned home as a very sick 

man. Thinking about my grandmother’s life made me realize that at that time Finland was 

full of women in similar situations as hers. 

Because my granny and my mother are dead now, I started to look 

for other women who could tell me more about that period and about 

the underlying mental mechanisms these women had to have to make 

it through. 

In the film The Unknown Woman I try to discover the survival 

mechanisms women had to master and which might be still be affecting 

the Finnish society and passed on, at least to my own generation. 

Elina Kivihalme 




Wireless World (working title) 

Virtual War 

Sähköinen sota 

Virtual War is a story about Zamira. She has escaped from Chechnya to Finland, 

and tries to unite her diasporic family living across Europe. The film follows 

Zamira in her different roles; as a mother who has lost her son and husband to 

war, as a political activist and as an energetic figure in the Chechen community of 

Finland. 

Mikael Storsjö is a Finnish-Swedish businessman and a human rights activist, 

who tries to help Zamira to reunite with her family, even though Storsjö himself 

stands accused of organising illegal immigration. Storsjö also provides the equipment 

and takes care of the technical planning of the construction of a Virtual 

Chechnya in the Second Life service on the Internet. 

The film follows Chechen refugees negotiating the construction of a Virtual 

Chechnya, with visions and hopes that focus on real-life Chechnya. During the 

process, the reality and the contradictory hopes of Chechens who are scattered 

around the world, inevitably conflict with each other. 

2011 | DigiBeta, HD | 16:9 | Stereo | approx. 60’ 

Wireless World (working title) 

Wireless World (työnimi) 

To understand the challenges of the new ways of relating and communicating, 

director Sonja Lindén sets out on a subjective journey. She explores her society on 

the verge of turning ubiquitous – a wireless society where the laws of time, space 

and distance are revolutionizing the concept of liaison. She starts from today’s society 

but also looks at what the future may have in store for us. During her quest, 

Lindén observes people’s experiences of freedom and presence. How is our postinformation 

society and the technological progress changing our way of life? 

2011 | HD Master, DigiBeta | 16:9 | Dolby Digital | 70’–90’ 

Director: Pekka Niskanen Script: Pekka Niskanen Cinematography: Timo Peltonen, Antti 

Seppänen, Heikki Färm Producer: Pertti Veijalainen Production company: Illume Oy Production 

support: The Finnish Film Foundation, AVEK Financing TV company: YLE International 

sales: Illume Oy 

Pekka Niskanen 

Pekka Niskanen is a media artist and filmmaker whose works have been exhibited worldwide. 

His most important one man show was the film A Girl Bathing in a Kitchen Sink 

(2000) at the White Box Gallery in New York in April 2004. 

The installation work Stefan Lindfors (1993), the site specific work I Like Him and Her 

(1995) and the video installation As a Matter of Fat (1998) are part of the collection of the 

Contemporary Art Museum of Helsinki. In 2005 Niskanen realized the set design and costumes 

for Verdi’s Rigoletto at the Gothenburg Opera in Sweden. 

Director: Sonja Lindén Script: Sonja Lindén Cinematography: Peter Flinckenberg Editing: 

Samu Heikkilä Sound design: Janne Laine Producer: Sonja Lindén Production company: 

Avanton Productions Oy Co-production: Mantaray Film, Sweden Production support: The 

Finnish Film Foundation, AVEK, MEDIA Programme of the European Union, Nordisk Film 

& TV Fond Financing TV company: YLE Co-productions, SVT Kultur International sales: 

Avanton Productions Oy 

Sonja Lindén 

Sonja Lindén is an independent filmmaker, producer and director, who established Avanton 

Productions in 2006. Her own films focus on the experience of inner freedom and its 

reflections on our external reality. The dimensions of love and loneliness are additional 

important themes in her films: No Man is an Island (2006), Gacaca – Awaiting Justice 

(2003), Breathing (2002), Steps on the Yoga Path (2000). 

Director Sonja Lindén: 

I think it is fantastic to live in these times! We can reach the whole world easily – it is literally 

on our hand. I love being efficient and free to move while working or taking care of my 

relationships. I, like many others, consider myself dependent on my mobile and laptop and 

on the feeling of being ’connected’. The wireless revolution has made me feel powerful, in 

control and effective. At the same time I have become deeply interested in the search and 

understanding for the consequences of living in a world where technology and the human 

being are getting more and more entwined. The effects there are on our consciousness 

have awoken a particular interest in me. 

I feel it very important to understand what we are doing and going through now. The 

change is so fast and escalating exponentially that it is hard to keep up with it. We are 

part of the nature; we cannot just conquer it and forget about it. We cannot forget something 

where we come from. Is all this change for the better? And if so, what do I need to 

understand to be able to be an active part of the future society and still be rooted in myself. 

Does technology bring us more freedom or more dependency – or both? 

I realize that my deepest interest as a filmmaker lies on the concept and experience of 

freedom. Let it be physical or psychological or emotional freedom. 

I have had this as an underlying theme also in my previous films – 

about a physically ill woman, about yoga and about solitude, 

a man living alone on an island. By the end of the day I’m searching 

for the experience of freedom and also for my understanding of it. 

What does it mean to be free? What kind of person really is free? 

That is my principal interest – a need that comes from my soul. 

Sonja Lindén 

Director Pekka Niskanen: 

Zamira and Mikael have made many trips to help the nephew and his family, who live as 

refugees outside Finland. All the journeys have been in vain and Zamira finds it very difficult 

to believe that there will eventually be a happy ending. However, Mikael tries to convince 

her that this is still a possibility. The film follows Zamira and Mikael’s recurrent attempts 

for her family’s reunion, and Mikael’s circle of friends as they actively help people 

escape the war-torn Chechnya. 

In August 2010 Zamira was able to visit Chechnya, where she went to see her mother 

and other relatives. Even though the Chechen police confiscated her video recording 

equipment, she was able to bring film material across the border. Zamira’s family is suffering 

from ungrounded arrests and blackmail from the authorities in Chechnya. Their 

homes have been destroyed and their last hope lies in fleeing Chechnya and becoming 

refugees. 

The Second Life project that was started by Zamira has strengthened Chechen refugees’ 

sense of freedom of speech, even though it has not unified the European Chechen 

diaspora. In order to protect vulnerable people’s anonymity, the film will depict meetings 

with Zamira and others who have escaped from Chechen wars through Second Life, that 

can disguise their identities. 

In the photo collage of the Russian Internet publication Nordlys 

Mikael Storsjö, who has helped Chechenians to Finland, is groundlessly 

linked with the terrorist attack to the Moscow underground in March 

Pekka Niskanen 


Contact information: 

Producers and International Sales Companies 

Autlook Filmsales GmbH 

www.autlookfilms.com 

Avanton Productions Oy 

Harjuviita 16 A 21 

FI-02110 Espoo 

+358 50 567 1895 

Bronson Club Oy 

Hämeentie 11 

FI-00530 Helsinki 

Tel. +358 40 590 9999 

jesse@bronson.fi 

www.bronson.fi 

Deckert Distribution GmbH 

www.deckert-distribution.com 

Filmimaa Ltd 

Siamintie 14 


Tel. +358 50 566 6596 

markku.tuurna@sci.fi 

www.filmimaa.fi 

Films Transit International Inc. 

www.filmtransit.com 

First Floor Productions Oy 

Hietalahdenkatu 8 A 13 


Tel. +358 9 6124 9660 

firstfloor@firstfloor.fi 

First Hand Films GmbH 

www.firsthandfilms.com 

Fortissimo Films 

www.fortissimofilms.com 

Frameworks Production House 

Lönnrotinkatu 38 B 30 


Tel. +358 45 122 1964 

tuomas.sallinen@yamifilms.com 

www.yamifilms.com 

Guerilla Films Oy 

Kiuastie 7 B 


Tel. +358 40 506 2675 

info@guerillafilms.fi 

www.guerillafilms.fi 

Handle Productions Oy 

Pohjoisranta 20 b B 41 


+358 400 512 205 

Illume Oy 

Palkkatilankatu 7 


Tel./Fax +358 9 148 1489 

illume@illume.fi 

www.illume.fi 

Interprod Ab 

www.interprod.fi 

It’s Alive Productions 

Heinäsintie 79 

FI-08700 Lohja 

Tel. +358 50 526 4304 

info@itsalive.fi 

www.itsalive.fi 

Kinosto Oy 

Linnakoskenkatu 23 A 12 


Tel. +358 50 3727 136 

info@kinosto.fi 

www.kinosto.fi 

Kinovid Productions 

Pursimiehenkatu 23 A 19 


Tel. +358 40 580 6626 

timo.humaloja@elisanet.fi 

Lafayette Films 

albinounitedfilm@gmail.com 

Tel. +44 1444 484 510 

Långfilm Productions Finland Oy 

Vislauskuja 13 


Tel. +358 10 440 4800 

Fax +358 10 4404809 

info@langfilm.fi 

www.langfilm.fi 

Marianna Films 

Punavuorenkatu 5 A 2 


Tel./Fax +358 9 622 1614 

marianna.films@gmx.net 

www.mikakaurismaki.com 

The Match Factory 

www.the-match-factory.com 

Nordic Film Pool Oy 

Pyhtääntie 10 


Tel. +358 520 7600 

nordicfilmpool@kolumbus.fi 

Nosferatu Oy 

Kalevankatu 44 A 2 


+358 50 555 1819 

Oktober Oy 

Uutiskatu 3 


Tel. +358 40 709 3331 

joonas@oktober.fi 

www.oktober.fi 

Oran Productions / Ali Lacheb 

Susitie 26 E 33 


Tel. +358 40 7077 285 

oran_productions@yahoo.fr 

Pirkanmaa Film Centre 

www.elokuvakeskus.com 

Sputnik Oy 

Museokatu 13 A 


Tel. +358 9 6877 100 

Fax +358 9 6877 1010 

sputnik@sputnik.fi 

www.orimattila.fi/kirjasto/ 

kaurismaki 

Festival contacts 

for all titles: 


Kanavakatu 12 


Tel. +358 9 6220 300 

Fax +358 9 6220 3050 

ses@ses.fi 

www.ses.fi 

Film festivals in Finland 2011 

Published by the Finnish Film Foundation | Editors: Sonja Potenze and Marja Pallassalo | 

Translations: Said Dakash, production companies | Layout: Praxis Oy | Printed by: PreMediaHelsinki, 2011 

DocPoint – 

Helsinki Documentary Film Festival 

25.–30.1.2011 

Fredrikinkatu 23 


Tel. +358 9 672 472 

Fax +358 9 673 998 

info@docpoint.com 

www.docpoint.info 

Tampere International Short Film Festival 

9.–13.3.2011 

Tullikamarinaukio 2 

FI-33101 Tampere 

Tel. +358 3 223 5681 

Fax +358 3 223 0121 

office@tff.fi 

www.tamperefilmfestival.fi 

Sodankylän elokuvajuhlat – 

Midnight Sun Film Festival 

15–19.6.2011 

Kansanopistontie 5 

FI-99600 Sodankylä 

Fax +358 16 614 522 

office@msfilmfestival.fi 

www.msfilmfestival.fi 

Espoo Ciné International Film Festival 

19.–28.8.2011 

PO Box 95 


Tel. +358 9 466 599 

Fax +358 9 466 458 

office@espoocine.fi 

www.espoocine.fi 

Helsinki Film Festival – Love & Anarchy 

15.–25.9.2011 

Mannerheimintie 21–24 

Box 889 


Tel. +358 9 6843 5230 

Fax +358 9 6843 5232 

office@hiff.fi 

www.hiff.fi 

Oulu International Children’s Film Festival 

21.–27.11.2011 

Hallituskatu 7 

FI-90100 Oulu 

Tel. +358 8 881 1293 

Fax +358 8 881 1290 

info@oufilmcenter.inet.fi 

www.ouka.fi/lef

Finnish Documentary Films 2011

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