Interviews

Invisible Demons, screening in Nordic Competition, might loosely be described as a symphony of a city, but one suffering severely from many of the ailments associated with climate change. “I have felt the strangulation of a concretised world since I have formed my earliest memories of having been in my home town in Delhi,” the director tells Business Doc Europe.

The Danish director is at Nordisk Panorama 2022 in a dual capacity. She is participating in the Forum with her new project Breaker, about three young professional break-dancers training for the 2024 Olympics, co-directed with Jens Lengerke. Meanwhile, Hopland’s autobiographical Moosa Lane is screening in the Festival’s New Nordic Voices strand.

Ice hockey, perhaps. Ski jumping, yes. Middle and long distance running, certainly (who can forget Paavo Nurmi?). And football had the great Jari Litmanen. But cricket? No. This is not a sport in which the Finns have hitherto displayed any signs of excellence. Nonetheless, Otso Alanko’s new doc promises to do for Finnish batting, bowling and fielding what Cool Runnings once did for tobogganing in Jamaica.

Despite being charming, playful and funny, Gunhild Westhagen Magnor’s film, screening in Best Nordic Documentary Competition, was in a roundabout way inspired by the questions she had as she watched TV footage of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik. “How can a person who once was an innocent little child…end up doing something horrible like that?” the director asks.

Rima, the protagonist of Louise Leth’s See Me As I Am, is funny, kind-hearted and relentlessly optimistic. She is also autistic. Leth’s film, screening in The New Nordic Voice competition at the Nordisk Panorama, will therefore surprise anyone expecting a downbeat documentary about isolation and suffering. The filmmaker discusses the work with BDE.

Take two women. Marion’s mother committed suicide after suffering sexual abuse as a child. Ida was raped as a teenager. What they have in common is that they are both part of close-knit Sapmi communities where discussing such horrific experiences is considered taboo. Filmmaker Liselotte Wajstedt talks to Business Doc Europe.

In his heartwarming doc short-listed for the Best Doc at the European Film Awards, director Einari Paakkanen introduces us to a cast of Finns for whom karaoke is more than mere entertainment, rather an emotional support mechanism. During Finnish Film Affair producer Marianne Mäkelä of Napafilms pitched the project to the international distribution community.

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.

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 Power of the People we follow the extraordinary young Finnish activist and poet Laura Eklund Nhaga as she embarks upon a journey to the US to meet fellow activists in Chicago. She also encounters Heather Booth, leading activate for ‘organization’ and the processes needed to transform words into action. Director Mervi Enqvist discusses her film with Business Doc Europe.