Finnish Film Affair

Produced by Kirsi Mattila of Icebreaker Productions, Mohamed El Aboudi’s project about Finnish immigrants entering the later stages of life was handed the €3000 prize. The 11th edition of Finland’s international industry destination Finnish Film Affair comes to an end on Friday 23 September. The event has so far been attended by close to 500 guests from 22 countries and 3 continents.

In her documentary selected for FFA, Elli Rintala profiles forensic scientist Helena Ranta who, back in the late 1990s, led the Finnish research team that conducted independent investigations into evidence of war crimes against the Serbian army in Kosovo, led by Slobodan Milošević. The filmmaker discusses her film with Business Doc Europe.

In Susanna Helke’s cleverly provocative and often very moving documentary, the beautifully hypnotic sound of Anna-Mari Kähärä’s music plays in poignant counterpoint to the words, comments and confessions posted by carers for the elderly in Finland between 2019 and 2021, and sung by a choir up of fellow, exhausted nurses.

In Iiris Härmä’s latest documentary, two well-meaning environmental scientists travel to the ‘Cradle of Humanity’ in Kenya to reintroduce the culture of storytelling to nomadic tribes people. But they soon find out that the needs, practices and indeed frailties of the local villagers are not so dissimilar to those of people living elsewhere in the world. The filmmaker talks to Business Doc Europe.

Director Juha Suonpää discusses his new project, about a man and his search for the elusive Eurasian lynx, with Business Doc Europe. The ancient relationship between humankind and predator “is something that goes paradoxically to the origins of the Finnish mentality, how we came to be here in the north, how we survived here in north,” the filmmaker says.