“Showtime in Helsinki is a film that deconstructs the anatomy of an almost forgotten diplomatic process,” Finnish producer Oskar Forstén (Polygraf) tells BDE of his new project selected for Finnish Film Affair. “In its essence it is Cold War history like never told before, about a conference that was considered meaningless, but that ultimately changed the world.”
The event Forstén is referring to is the Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe, sometimes referred to as the Helsinki Accords (known as well by its “sexy acronym CSCE” or known as well by its sexy acronym CSCE, Forstén points out).
On July 30 1975, after years of painful negotiations, 35 world leaders gathered in Helsinki for “this unprecedented three-day Cold War extravaganza.” Gerald Ford, Leonid Brezhnev, Harold Wilson, Erich Honecker and Josip Broz Tito were all there in their pomp to sign an agreement designed to bring the Cold War to an end.
But as Forstén and director Arthur Franck point out, “the turnout was far from pleasing anyone.” The Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn said the agreement was the “funeral of Eastern Europe,” the New York Times stated it was “misguided and empty,” and Henry Kissinger privately called it “meaningless,” the pair remind.
“It wasn’t until 30 years later that people grasped the real impact of what occurred: Helsinki had been the starting point for the demise of the Soviet Empire and the totalitarian rule in Eastern Europe,” the pair maintain.
At FFA, Forstén was looking to find a sales agent, finance distribution outlets, potential co-producers and festival interest. The mainly archive project, currently in development, is earmarked for Winter 2024/25 delivery.
Forstén highlights the project’s international appeal, but also one significant hurdle he must surmount. “For us it’s been clear from the get-go that Showtime in Helsinki is a film for the international audience. Therefore one of the main obstacles we have to overcome is the fact that licensing archival material for territories outside of Finland is really expensive,” he says.
“It’s going to be quite the balancing act between how much does one territory cost to license and how much financing is possible to raise [in that territory] realistically, but I think by finding the right partners in the right territories, we will succeed in getting our film out in the world.”
“It will be mostly archival material, but we will also be recreating these behind-closed-doors scenes, where US and Soviet leaders work out their differences, speculate about nuclear war and small-talk about weight loss,” he adds of how the story’s visual style and comic potential. “These discussions were transcribed verbatim by notetakers from the U.S. State Department, and we’re looking into cool ways of placing the audience ‘in the room’ using graphics, AI and VFX.”
Director Franck, who admits that he made his first film (based on Chaplin’s The Great Dictator) at the age of 10, adds in his notes for Showtime in Helsinki: “Having spent over two years and hundreds of hours ploughing through all the remaining footage from the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, I’m now fully immersed in what went down those summer days almost 50 years ago, as well as in the cinematic potential within the story I am creating. Rather than a traditional historical documentary, I see this film as an atmospheric essay mood piece that is fueled by the windmills of history.
”Forstén compliments his director, stressing how “Arthur is a history buff, but with an eye for peculiar details that changes the way one perceives historical events. And once he’s set on a vision for a film, he really commits to it, and he works his butt off to bring that vision to life. He truly wants the audience to have an experience that sticks with you.”
