Finnish Film Affair 23

Finnish producer Isabella Karhu fills in Business Doc Europe on her new feature project, about the fate of folk a 150-year-old gold mining community in the faraway Lapland wilderness, which is presented at the Helsinki showcase of Finnish docs. “Gold mining in Lapland is almost a folk-tale in Finland and this crew had the last chance to capture this way of life in its original form. No other feature doc film has been made about this community,” Karhu underlines.

Mari Mantela describes her new documentary as “a hybrid between bio, fiction and documentary” and “an ode to performing arts and the necessity of rituals.” Elegiac and a feast for the eyes, it is also a film that blossoms from the existential emptiness that an actor feels during Covid to his realisation of a long-held dream, to create an old-time travelling theatre, complete with big top.

Sibiry Konate, from a small village in Burkina Faso, moved to Finland 10 years ago to pursue his dream to be a professional choreographer. For his friends and family back home he has now become a ‘rich European’ who could solve their many problems. But nobody wants to hear the truth, that Sibiry’s life consists of numerous mundane struggles and that money is never sufficient… Producer Ella Ruohonen discusses her new project with BDE.

The Finnish producer/director team of Jouko Aaltonen and Mervi Junkkonen pitched the intriguingly titled The Art of Reindeer Racing at FFA, about a shy young girl who finds a mentor in the form of a champion racer. “It's a story about coming-of-age and is also about the importance of a mentor in a young person's life,” commented director Junkkonen. “It demands an extra courage to come out of your shell and find your own voice ,and this is what my film is about.”

Showtime in Helsinki, directed by Arthur Franck and produced by Oskar Forstén won the FFA Documentary Award, valued at €3000 and which goes towards the production of an international trailer. The film concerns the 1975 ‘Helsinki Accords’ conference, designed to bring the Cold War to an end, but which ultimately led to “the demise of the Soviet Empire and totalitarian rule in Eastern Europe.”

The Focus on Finland event was the first of a series of doc pitch sessions at Finnish Film Affair, running 20-22 September. Five new projects were presented to the documentary professionals in attendance. “The aim of the event is to strengthen the promotion of Finnish content to international industry events and increase the opportunities for Finnish content creators to achieve international funding, sales and distribution,” say organisers.

The industry event of Helsinki International Film Festival and a marketplace for Nordic films and Finnish series, Finnish Film Affair will once again gather hundreds of decision makers to Helsinki on 20-22 September. Presented in the showcase will be nine new feature doc projects from the likes of Virpi Suutari (Once Upon a Time in a Forest) and Truth.com by Tonislav Hristov.