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.
Burnt Earth
In John Webster’s Burnt Earth, a Finnish ground firefighting force joins the EU Civil Protection Pool in Portugal to fight climate change-induced forest fires both now and in the future. The film is produced by Evelina Kantola of Yellow Film.
Webster described his new opus as a character-driven climate change film. “It’s my third feature on the climate emergency. I started back in 2008 (Recipes For Disaster) and ever since then, climate is very close to my heart,” he explained. “It’s a film about a group of Finnish firefighters who form a specialist unit to fight large forest fires, which we don’t have in Finland…yet. Because all climate models point to the fact that soon we will have 75% of Finland covered in forest [and] we’ll have to have the know-how to fight [fires]. So they [the Finnish firefighters] travel to Portugal to learn from the best. The Portuguese are absolutely at the front line of a very changing Europe.”
Webster was asked about the urgency of this project. “All the extremes of climate are getting worse everywhere. I think people are very aware about it [but] at the same time we are also aware that people are getting rather tired about it perhaps because it seems there’s so little that the individual can do.”
“I definitely see in this story engaging characters that we get to know,” Webster added. “We follow them through this kind of baptism on fire, but we should see people actually doing something very concrete to protect and to fight against the [destruction] of the planet…There’s the focus on individual characters, on people that we can relate to, [but] the big picture is climate.”
The €417,000 project has a mooted delivery date of December 2024. Producer Kantola is looking for financing partners, co-production interest and a sales agent in Helsinki before she and Webster move on to pitch the project at Nordisk Panorama and Doclisboa, whose guest country this year is Finland.
“I once again wish to find a cinematic way of portraying one of the greatest challenges facing humanity today. The way I have tried to approach this is by finding a story angle that is relatable and emotional to us all as individuals. To tackle the global issue through everyday human experiences,” underlined Webster.
Homecoming
Suvi West and Anssi Kömi’s Homecoming world-premiered to public and critical acclaim in the recent TIFF Docs of the Toronto International Film Festival. The film is set during a moment of existential crisis within the museum world, as exemplified by the National Museum of Finland which recently returned thousands of objects to the indigenous Sámi people.
“Filmmaker Suvi West takes the audience behind the scenes of the museum world, revealing a visual, philosophical, and spiritual realm. She seeks a connection with ancestors through old museum objects, eventually arriving at the collective pain points of the Sámi people. How can the damage caused by outsiders be repaired so that collective pains can be left behind?” the synopsis asks.
In her accompanying statement West writes how, “I strongly felt that I have to follow this process and make a film about this. The story should be told through empowerment, not through bitterness. I believe that this is a unifying, positive, loving and even a spiritual journey. The most important feeling in my film [is] becoming whole and connected, even though difficult issues are dealt with.” International sales for the 76-mnute Homecoming are handled by First Hand Films.
Given the film’s highly lauded outing at TIFF, what was producer Janne Niskala looking to achieve at Finnish Film Affair? “I need you to go to the cinemas in two days because this is going to be out on Friday,” he told the professional audience. “We [have a] crazy situation in Finland because so many films are coming out. So we are competing for our place in the world. So please go to the cinema. I will refund your ticket if you don’t like it. This is our best film, I’m sure of it,” he joked.
“Of course, internationally, we are looking for festivals and buyers. International distribution is going to be easy for this because I never received so many emails from festivals and everybody who wants this film. But the domestic release now is something that really burns my heart. So please go to the cinema. Did I say it already? Go to the cinema.”
Omid – Hope
The feature project Omid – Hope by Iiris Härmä tells the extraordinary life story of 91-year-old Ellen Vuosalo who has lived in Iran for over 50 years, where she is known by her moniker, the Mother of Cranes. She spent the years of the Winter War (1939-40) in Finland, studied at a top university in California where she started a family with an Iranian man. After he kidnapped the children and left for his home country, Ellen followed him to Iran, where she has now lived for the past 55 years as an independent woman and nature conservationist. Today she lives by the Caspian Sea and shares her everyday life with her son Dana and ten cats.
Produced by Visa Koiso-Kanttila for Guerilla Films and supported by YLE, the film (budgeted at €250,000) will be ready for delivery in January 2024. “The story of Ellen Vuosalo gives us a unique perspective on the cultural differences, nature, conservation and everyday life in Iran [from] a strong and independent Scandinavian woman,” said Koiso-Kanttil, adding that the director/producer team’s previous Shepherds of the Earth (2022) has screened at 50+ film festivals, garnering over 20 awards in the process.
Ellen stayed in Iran even after personal tragedy (the drowning of her youngest child) and the 1979 Revolution. She became an ornothologist and a pioneer in nature conservation and one of the key figures in the protection of the endangered Siberian snow crane. “She became so famous for her work that everybody calls her Mother of Cranes in Iran.” But since 2008 there has been only one single snow crane left that migrates from Siberia to the whole Middle East, and it comes to Ellen’s winter neighbourhood. In the film, she wants to see this crane just one last time time, the filmmakers underlined.
Adds director Härmä: “Ellen’s rich life story spans nearly a hundred years around the globe. Ellen has witnessed the world and human activity in our time, but the film’s timeline goes beyond that. The ultimate message of the film is to remind us that human struggles with each other are eventually trampled underfoot and become memories, but nature remains, if only we understand the responsibility of being human, that we must preserve it for those who come after us. Conveying this message through our film is also Ellen’s own wish.”
The Arctic Circle of Lust
In Markku Heikkinen’s The Arctic Circle of Lust, the sexuality of northern Finnish family men, hidden from their spouses, friends and the surrounding community, forces them to make a choice: “hide it or come out with it.”
The film follows one man who has faced his bisexuality and has learned to be truthful and loyal both to himself and his partner. We also see men who have ended up living alone, having searched for a more suitable way to be sexual and loving men. Some keep their secrets to themselves. Others are looking for ways to come out of the closet and find a new contractual basis for their life together with their life partners, regardless of the pressure of conformity created by society.
“I started to make this film, but step by step it become more like a family movie,” commented Heikkinen on the film’s core themes. “These are real family men [but] I think [as] years go by, and you are in a long-term relationship, your relationship to sexuality, sexual desire and affection can change. So I think ‘truth’ is the theme, of bisexuality and sexual secrets. We are actually talking about the universal theme about love and sexual desire in long-term relationship and how to be loyal, how to be truthful, how to define sexual morals in your own life.”
The project, budgeted at €285,000, has broadcasters on board in the form of YLE (Finland) and NDR Arte (Germany). The project won a pre-buy from Swiss broadcaster RTS at Visions du Réel Industry 2023. It has also received Finnish funding from numerous sources including the Finnish Film Foundation.
In Heikkinen’s director statement, he states how “in my film, I want to depict people’s experiences, feelings that are put (in quotation marks] in “social science”…The prevailing heteronormativity in the community comes to light when a single person searches for a sexual identity or escapes definitions. Am I accepted? is the big question,” he ends.
Shadowland
The synopsis for Shadowland, directed by Otso Tiainen tells how, in a hidden land of magic and make-believe within the French Pyrenees, seekers of the Holy Grail have to confront dark and painful truths about one of their brethren who claims to be a prophet.
The 90-minute film, budgeted at €390,000, is scheduled for January 2024 delivery. In Helsinki, producer Kalle Kinnunen (Bufo) was looking for sales representation, distribution and festival interest.
“Shadowland is about people who don’t feel at home in modern society and find refuge in this remote region in the South of France,” director Tiainen writes. “While this world may seem strange and fantastic, the aspirations of the seekers are universal. We all seek that which would make us whole: for some, it’s success, for some, spirituality, and you must be careful with who you will decide to follow. It is also the story of us as filmmakers. We fell in love with this world, we found adventures in it and we too were deceived. It’s all there in Shadowland.”
