The 15th Finnish Film Affair, dedicated to showcasing new Finnish and Nordic doc and fiction content, will present eight feature documentary projects, as prepared and presented under the guidance of industry experts Margreth Olin and Gitte Hansen.
“For the last few years, FFA has received very strong documentary projects, where the quality is reflected across the board,” Head of Industry Lydia Taylerson tells BDE. “This is really amazing to see, even if it does make the jury’s role that much more difficult. This year we received 22 documentary applications in our call for projects, which has remained quite steady in the past few years ,with similar numbers coming in in recent years.”
“A notable change, however, has come through in the amount of co-production projects which have applied, as we’re seeing more and more,” she adds. “This year, approximately half of the projects were co-productions (see list below).”
Taylerson describes a local industry operating under what she feels to be straitened circumstances. “The industry is in a difficult state, there’s no beating around the bush on that one – the same also stands for fiction projects too,” she says. “Film financing is becoming increasingly difficult to take place solely within Finland, and so more and more projects are having to look abroad to secure sustainable finances.”
She nevertheless points out that there are success stories to be found within the local doc scene, such as The Secret Reading Club of Kabul, which won the NORDIC:DOX award at 2026’s CPH:DOX and which was pitched at Finnish Film Affair in 2025.
“It feels like there is interest in the film industry from the top level, we just don’t have the funding in place to keep the industry sustainable,” she continues, and is “eagerly waiting,” alongside fellow professionals, to see what changes the new Head of the Finnish Film Foundation may introduce.
“But the lack of funding is also reflected in the grassroots level where filmmakers themselves seem to be seeking out more and more training, as seen in our Söderlångvik applications, as seen in the amount of training initiatives we ourselves include at FFA,” she adds. “People are expanding their skills and trying different lanes, exploring fiction vs documentary filmmaking, microdramas etc.”
Taylerson strikes a more optimistic note when describing the virtues of the annual FFA event, and its 3-day programme of pitching, deal-making, networking and cogitation over all matters doc, which includes an hour-long analysis by IDFA Artistic Director Isabel Arrate Fernandez and Tribeca Senior Programmer Jason Gutierrez when theshed light on what it really means to put a festival programme together.
“It’s been thrilling to be able to step into the decision-making shoes with the panels and programme after having been a part of building it for so many years,” she says. “There’s also a lot of ambition that goes into FFA, of figuring out the best way to help get national projects into the international markets in an ever-changing industry.”
This year, FFA has built a documentary sidebar programme with industry professionals within the FFA main programme, which includes further workshops with Gitte Hansen and Margreth Olin. September 25 will also an examination Agora EU’s funding and the revolving strategies around film distribution, especially within the documentary sphere.
“In all honesty, I think Finland’s unique selling point is the lack of hierarchy within the film industry here,” Taylerson adds. “Anyone who attends Finnish Film Affair also feels that. You can be a producer just starting out in your career, and over morning coffee be chatting with senior programmers of Tribeca or SXSW. If you go over to some of the bigger film markets you might not even be able to get a meeting with them as they will be fully booked throughout. However at FFA, there is an even playing ground for attendees, where we encourage everyone to mix and mingle as much as possible.”
Documentary selections 2026 (project descriptions supplied by FFA):
- Lonesome Land by Virpi Suutari (Finland, Denmark). Producer: Virpi Suutari. Prod companies: Euphoria Film (Finland), Tambo Film (Denmark, minority). Synopsis: One day, everything went to shit. A forestry machine driver crossed a river and, without realizing, crushed thousands of highly endangered freshwater pearl mussels. Lonesome Land is a heartfelt tale about small human lives caught in the gears of capitalism – a story of our shared planetary loneliness.
- P by Vladimir Loginov (Estonia). Producer: Janijs Möls. Prod company: Korraks Film. Synopsis: A visual journey toward the birth of sound, tracing the creation of an Estonia grand piano from the silence of the forest to the final note.
- Umarells – We Know Better (Finland Germany) by Hannu-Pekka Vitikainen. Producers: Hannu-Pekka Vitikainen, Dirk Manthey. Prod company: Zone 2 Pictures, Dirk Manthey. Synopsis: The film is a comedy about working-class men born in Italy during World War II, about their values, worldview, and fading memories.
- Darkness Counts by Anna Antsalo (Finland). Producer: Venla Hellstedt. Prod company: Elokuvayhtiö Viisi. Synopsis: In the borderlands of Finland, Olli attempts to preserve the natural dark nights. Light pollution seriously threatens our physical and mental wellbeing. Olli wants to save the night, nature, and our histories that are written upon the vault of the sky. By stopping to gaze at moments drawn by the darkness, one can better understand the significance of humans as part of the vastness of the Universe.
- Myllylä by Sean Ricks, Jussi Sandhu, Ville Hakone (Finland, Sweden, Norway). Producer: Pasi Hakkio. Production companies: Wacky Tie Films, Story AB, F(X) Produksjoner AS. Synopsis: More than a sports story, Myllylä is a story of love, passion, shame, the yearning for grace, and the intergenerational struggle for survival. It forces us to ask, what do we truly demand of our sports heroes – and who ultimately pays the price when they fall?
- Mariana’s Lament by Antti Haase & Mariana Reyes (Finland, Bulgaria, Mexico, TBA). Producer: Kaarle Aho. Prod company: Making Movies. Synopsis: Can a healer heal herself? Since Mariana was a little girl in Mexico City, her mother Victoria, a psychologist, barely hugged her. Eventually Victoria became an alcoholic. Mariana studied to become a psychologist too, both to help others and to better understand herself.
- Unicorns Never Die by Janne Tanskanen, Olli Vuokko (Finland). Producer: Ari Matikainen, Paulina Maus. Prod company: Kinocompany. Synopsis: Following a 2009 motorcycle accident that costs him his leg, Matti Suur-Hamari sinks into a deep identity crisis. Hospitalized, he is inspired by American parasnowboarder Evan Strong to try the sport, a choice that leads him to Paralympic gold. Along the way, his life weaves into Team Unicorns, a global community of adaptive athletes redefining their lives after trauma. They become Matti’s second family, bonded by shared injuries, illness, and heavy loss.
- Dear Iria by Janna Kyllästinen (US, Finland). Producer: Kati Aho, Iris Olsson, Misha Jaari, Mark Lwoff. Production companies: Iria Te Film LLC, Bufo. Synopsis: On the top floor of an old industrial building in SoHo, New York, lies a loft that has remained unchanged for more than half a century, the home of Iria (1932–2022), a model turned artist and an undiscovered Finnish pioneer of SoHo’s art scene. Dear Iriamoves between past and present, weaving together Iria’s diaries, found cassette tape recordings from a clairvoyant session, which provide the only surviving record of her voice, and contemporary documentary scenes that rediscover her life as a quietly unfolding mystery.
