Meet the for­ward-think­ing cre­atives lead­ing Finnish cinema’s charge

The weath­er can make life fair­ly grim in Fin­land. In the sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed north­ern region of Lap­land, the mer­cury fre­quent­ly plum­mets to ‑30 degrees cel­sius (-22 fahren­heit) dur­ing the harsh win­ter months, and in some parts the sun doesn’t peer above the hori­zon for two months sol­id (in the south­ern cap­i­tal Helsin­ki the short­est day is about six hours long). Sad­ly but unsur­pris­ing­ly, sui­cide rates here are among the high­est in the world. And yet meet­ing ordi­nary Finnish folk belies this som­bre stereo­type. They’re a warm, open bunch who appear acute­ly aware of their shared quirks – one tells me that unlike their Swedish cousins, Finns are more hes­i­tant when it comes to express­ing nation­al pride. Self-pro­mo­tion has nev­er been their strong suit.

All of which paints Fin­land as the peren­ni­al plucky under­dog, a place where the peo­ple are instinc­tive­ly averse to ego and pre­ten­sion. That’s true, but it’s per­haps more accu­rate to describe Finns as innate­ly self-effac­ing, almost to a fault. This is espe­cial­ly so in the case of the country’s film indus­try, which has always been over­shad­owed by its Scan­di­na­vian coun­ter­parts – the only notable excep­tion being Aki Kau­ris­mä­ki, Finland’s answer to Jim Jar­musch and best-known export. Now, Finnish cin­e­ma is final­ly mak­ing its mark on the world stage at both ends of the scale, thanks to the efforts of sev­er­al for­ward-think­ing pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies and some tal­ent­ed individuals.

In June the Edin­burgh Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val pre­sent­ed a spe­cial focus on Fin­land, fea­tur­ing Alek­si Salmenperä’s envi­ron­men­tal thriller The Mine, Juan Reina’s under­wa­ter sur­vival doc Div­ing Into the Unknown and Mikko Kuparinen’s roman­tic dra­ma 2 Nights Till Morn­ing. Else­where, ear­li­er in the year writer/​director Juho Kuos­ma­n­en picked up the Un Cer­tain Regard prize at the 69^th Cannes Film Fes­ti­val for his comi-trag­ic box­ing dra­ma The Hap­pi­est Day in the Life of Olli Mäki, which was sup­port­ed by The Finnish Film Foun­da­tion, mak­ing him only the sec­ond Finn after Kau­ris­mä­ki to win a major award at the festival.

Kuosmanen’s part­ly-fic­tion­alised peri­od dra­ma was inspired by a famous world title bout which took place in 1962 between the epony­mous feath­er­weight fight­er and the much fan­cied Amer­i­can Dav­ey Moore. Shot in gor­geous mono­chrome 16mm and boast­ing a pair of cap­ti­vat­ing leads in Jarkko Lahti and Oona Airo­la, it’s exact­ly the kind of film you might expect to do well on the Euro­pean fes­ti­val cir­cuit. But while its suc­cess goes some way to dis­prov­ing the notion that Finnish cin­e­ma doesn’t trav­el as well as Dan­ish or Swedish cin­e­ma, for the time being it remains an excep­tion to the rule – a sig­nif­i­cant but rel­a­tive­ly small art-house film already punch­ing above its weight.

Kau­ris­mä­ki is still king both at home and abroad, to some extent because he con­tin­ues to oper­ate on the out­er fringes of an indus­try in flux. His films are not only impor­tant cul­tur­al­ly but also con­sis­tent­ly pop­u­lar, per­fect­ly cap­tur­ing as they do the dead­pan sto­icism and gal­lows humour that epit­o­mis­es cer­tain aspects of Finnish life (although iron­i­cal­ly his films are not real­ly con­sid­ered come­dies in Fin­land). No one could ever hope to emu­late what Kau­ris­mä­ki has achieved over the last 30 or so years – and cru­cial­ly it appears that very few emerg­ing Finnish direc­tors are try­ing to do so.

Alek­si Salmen­perä stud­ied archi­tec­ture at Helsinki’s Aal­to Uni­ver­si­ty before switch­ing to film. Now a part-time pro­fes­sor at the uni­ver­si­ty, Salmen­perä was born in Helsin­ki but cur­rent­ly lives with his fam­i­ly in a small rur­al town which for half the year counts Kau­ris­mä­ki among its res­i­dents (he spends the long win­ter in Por­tu­gal). When they’re not play­ing foot­ball togeth­er, the long-time friends can often be found bemoan­ing the artis­tic hard­ships they’re rou­tine­ly faced with. ​“It’s not easy mak­ing the films you want to make,” admits Salmen­perä, ​“there’s not a lot of mon­ey avail­able and it’s dif­fi­cult to get the right peo­ple togeth­er for the amount of time need­ed to shoot a film. You have to com­pro­mise all the time.”

Despite numer­ous con­straints – from a lack of access to resources to lim­it­ed avenues for financ­ing – direc­tors like Salmen­perä are still find­ing ways to tell orig­i­nal sto­ries that both inform and reflect Finnish cul­ture. Which is a lot more than be said for count­less inde­pen­dent film­mak­ers work­ing today across Europe, where oppor­tu­ni­ties are lim­it­ed by arts fund­ing cuts cou­pled with the sat­u­ra­tion of Hol­ly­wood and oth­er for­eign pro­duc­tions. Indeed, in Fin­land the demand for home­grown cin­e­ma is excep­tion­al­ly high – only France has a big­ger domes­tic mar­ket share (in 2015 it was around 30 per cent for both). It is said that in times of eco­nom­ic aus­ter­i­ty, red lip­stick and movie tick­ets are among the only com­modi­ties that see an uptake in sales. They’re cheap ways for peo­ple to feel bet­ter, and for Finns look­ing for rea­sons to be cheer­ful there is nowhere bet­ter than the cinema.

Giv­en the melan­choly mood that lingers through­out the year here, it comes as no real shock to learn that broad come­dies and dark thrillers tend to do well. Increas­ing­ly, how­ev­er, ani­ma­tion, fan­ta­sy and sci­ence fic­tion films are gain­ing ground. Iron Sky Uni­verse, a tiny pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny sit­u­at­ed in Helsinki’s new­ly rede­vel­oped indus­tri­al quar­ter, is on a mis­sion to expand their Nazis-in-space fran­chise into a glob­al cross-plat­form media prop­er­ty. Hav­ing suc­cess­ful­ly built a high­ly engaged and loy­al fan com­mu­ni­ty via a pio­neer­ing crowd­fund­ing and crowd­sourc­ing strat­e­gy, direc­tor Timo Vuoren­so­la is con­fi­dent that his films can com­pete with much big­ger pro­duc­tions on an inter­na­tion­al scale.

“Tra­di­tion­al dis­tri­b­u­tion is quite stu­pid in a way,” he says, ​“you spend years mak­ing a film and then it all comes down to one week­end when you release it; by six o’clock on the Fri­day you already know whether it’s going to be a hit or a flop. We want­ed to over­haul that and fig­ure out a way to involve the fans in the pro­duc­tion process. They can help to finance it, obvi­ous­ly, but they can also con­tribute to the mar­ket­ing in a big way.” The Iron Sky films aren’t exact­ly push­ing the enve­lope artis­ti­cal­ly, but Vuorensola’s dream of cre­at­ing a ​“Scan­di­na­vian Star Wars” doesn’t seem all that fan­ci­ful when you con­sid­er that the trail­er for the forth­com­ing Iron Sky: The Com­ing Race was one of the most viewed videos on YouTube at the time of launch.

Speak­ing of mas­sive built-in fan­bas­es, in May the video game devel­op­er Rovio released the first Angry Birds movie, pro­duced in-house at the company’s Sil­i­con Val­ley-styled Espoo head­quar­ters with the sup­port of Sony Pic­tures in the US. A bud­get of €63m makes it the largest pro­duc­tion in Finland’s his­to­ry and it is also the country’s most suc­cess­ful film ever hav­ing hauled in over €300m world­wide. Ulla Junell, one of the film’s pro­duc­ers, reveals that right from the start Rovio were adamant on ​“keep­ing the mis­chie­vous­ness” and ​“edgy atti­tude” which are seen as a defin­ing Finnish char­ac­ter­is­tics. For a nation that has long felt con­flict­ed about its cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty, retain­ing a strong Finnish sen­si­bil­i­ty has sud­den­ly become an essen­tial sell­ing point for filmmakers.