Interviews

Top Finnish doccer Virpi Suutari pitched her new film to the professional audience of FFA. Fully funded and set to premiere in Spring 2024, the feature doc concerns radical young folk who are defending one of the last coniferous forest areas in Europe. “It is both a generational film that reflects the environmental feelings of the youth, and a love story of a younger generation whose object of love is the Finnish forest,” said the director.

Aida, a child on the autism spectrum, is determined to challenge existing norms and foster acceptance. But can the hard efforts of Aida and her mother Johanna change the world before their strength runs out? “Aida’s growth in the film is spectacular. We are confident that this film will engage, entertain and inform a wide range of audiences,” producer Juha Löppönen tells BDE of his new project.

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.”

In Bresky’s latest film she tells the story of a group of Sámi artists who , back in the 1970s, formed a collective and became involved in protests against the building of a massive hydroelectric dam which threatened to obliterate their community. “I think I bring a part of Sámi culture, history and heritage and give it to the Sámi people,” Bresky reflects to BDE on one of her main goals in making the documentary.

After rave reviews at Hot Docs, Icelandic filmmaker Gaukur Úlfarsson’s new doc is in Nordic Competition at Nordisk Panorama 2023. He talks to BDE about the “near genius” artist and provocateur Ragnar Kjartansson who, in 2021, had the madcap idea to recreate American soap opera Santa Barbara in Russia. But then the war happened. “Putin didn’t just invade Ukraine. He also invaded this documentary. He invaded everything!” says Úlfarsson.

Now in her early 70s, Sigrun Gunnarsdóttir is one of the most admired artists currently working on the Faroe Islands. The simplicity of her paintings is deceptive. She uses allegory and symbolism in a subtle and disarming way. Co-director Marianna Mørkøre discusses her film, which includes stop-motion animation, with BDE. “We felt that if we were making a different kind of documentary,” she says.

In her directorial debut Walls, award-winning Polish actress Kasia Smutniak enters the red zone, a highly dangerous strip of forest along the Poland/Belarus border and which contains a group of desperate migrants trapped in political limbo. “I’m not a journalist. I’m not a reporter. I’m just a regular citizen that is trying to understand what is going on,” Smutniak tells Business Doc Europe of her motivation to make the film.