Com­mu­ni­ty and cre­ativ­i­ty thrive at Finland’s Tam­pere Film Festival

The Finns don’t have a word for ​“please”. This was among the first thing I learned on arriv­ing in Tam­pere, a for­mer indus­tri­al hub locat­ed a nine­ty-minute train ride away from the estab­lished cul­tur­al heart of Helsin­ki. As a ter­mi­nal­ly apolo­getic British per­son who feels the excru­ci­at­ing weight of Brex­it with every step I take on the con­ti­nent, this was dev­as­tat­ing news. Thank­ful­ly I was informed by my wel­com­ing hosts from the City of Tam­pere and Tam­pere Film Fes­ti­val that the word for ​“thank you”, Kiitos, would more than suf­fice. Sure enough, across the five days I spent in the chilly cli­mate, I became accus­tomed to the cheery refrain echo­ing across restau­rants, bars, cin­e­ma screens and saunas. For my first encounter with Fin­land, I warmed up extreme­ly quickly.

The Tam­pere Film Fes­ti­val takes place in ear­ly March, just as the snow is begin­ning to melt and spring is peek­ing around the cor­ner. Though, in Fin­land March still means brac­ing tem­per­a­tures and frozen lakes – as we stepped out onto the ice of one such body of water, our guide assured us that the lake would still be frozen six metres deep for at least anoth­er fort­night. (Sure enough, no one plunged into the icy depths dur­ing our ice fish­ing expedition).

The warmth of the cin­e­ma is a wel­come respite, be it Cine Atlas, the shop­ping cen­tre mul­ti­plex that lends itself to the fes­ti­val for five days or Tampere’s cosy inde­pen­dent Art­house Nia­gara, which becomes a hub for the fes­ti­val, play­ing host to screen­ings, talks, and even some par­ties which spill over into the labyrinthi­an back cor­ri­dors behind the screens. Estab­lished in 1970, Tam­pere is North­ern Europe’s old­est short film fes­ti­val, and they take that respon­si­bil­i­ty extreme­ly seri­ous­ly, pack­ing around 500 short films into the pro­gramme from every cor­ner of the globe, as well as a num­ber of fea­tures in their nation­al Finnish com­pe­ti­tion. There are also a num­ber of pan­els, work­shops and spe­cial events (a high­light this year was a screen­ing of three silent Juho Kuos­ma­n­en shorts, screened at Tam­pere Cathe­dral with a live organ accom­pa­ni­ment) spread across the week-long celebration.

Film­mak­ers from around the world descend on the city, cre­at­ing a buzzy inter­na­tion­al atmos­phere. Around the main hotel’s break­fast buf­fet, I hear snatch­es of con­ver­sa­tion in Span­ish, Por­tuguese, Ger­man and Dan­ish as well as Eng­lish. Where big­ger fes­ti­vals are sus­cep­ti­ble to hier­ar­chies form­ing quick­ly, there was lit­tle sense of that at Tam­pere. Film­mak­ers, pro­duc­ers, pro­gram­mers and crit­ics min­gle with stu­dents and enthu­si­as­tic cinephiles – all the par­ties are free entry for badge hold­ers. Speech­es and Q&As are delight­ful­ly ad-hoc. Dur­ing one screen­ing of shorts I attend­ed, a film­mak­er shout­ed out from the back of the room ​“Sor­ry, I didn’t realise I’d made the cred­its so long!” as we all sat in polite silence. There’s an air of light chaos which runs through the fes­ti­val, giv­ing it a dis­tinct charm.

Part of this atmos­phere undoubt­ed­ly comes from the festival’s unique wel­come offered to film­mak­ers and guests: a trip to Hangaslahti, a tra­di­tion­al smoke sauna on open­ing night. Guests strip off and tod­dle into a tiny wood­en room heat­ed between 110 – 130°c, where they sweat it out in a room that’s played host to Finnish prime min­is­ters, before wad­dling out to a hole in the frozen lake for a quick dip in sub-zero waters. I did this once before I decid­ed I liked sit­ting out­side in the night air wrapped in a tow­el drink­ing a beer more than alter­nat­ing between the sauna and frigid water. But encour­ag­ing your guests to get sweaty and naked togeth­er as a fes­ti­val kicks off is a nov­el way of cre­at­ing an even play­ing field. I can’t imag­ine Thier­ry Fré­maux ush­er­ing every­one out for a skin­ny dip at Cannes.

As for the films – the nature of a short film fes­ti­val means not every sin­gle one is going to be a win­ner, but I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised by the breadth and scope of the Tam­pere pro­gramme, which was divid­ed into var­i­ous cat­e­gories by theme, medi­um and length. My per­son­al favourite sec­tion was the Inter­na­tion­al Com­pe­ti­tion strand enti­tled Ani­mal Fac­tor, which cen­tred on films about the ani­mal king­dom. There was Calf, an aus­tere Irish short about a trag­ic farm acci­dent, and The Sun Sets On Beirut, a British-Lebanese co-pro­duc­tion about a young woman search­ing for her miss­ing cat in the ruins of the city , but my high­light was Com­rade Poopy. Osten­si­bly a film about a spunky gin­ger cat who adapts when his own­ers up sticks to join rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies in Myan­mar, I was sur­prised to dis­cov­er the real sto­ry – Poopy’s own­ers had pre­vi­ous­ly enjoyed a com­fort­able life as pop­u­lar trav­el blog­gers, but they were tar­get­ed by Myanmar’s mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship after speak­ing out against them. The cou­ple were forced to leave their Insta­gram-ready life behind, tak­ing with them only suit­cas­es and their beloved cat as they head­ed for a rev­o­lu­tion­ary strong­hold in the jungle.

It’s the sort of incred­i­ble sto­ry that flour­ish­es at short film fes­ti­vals, where pro­gram­mers are able to ded­i­cate the time and space to films that oth­er­wise might get over­looked by big­ger fes­ti­vals or those geared towards fea­tures. But this may also be to Tampere’s detri­ment – while there real­ly is some­thing for every­one in the expan­sive pro­gramme, the scope is a lit­tle over­whelm­ing and means that it’s hard to know where to start. There’s no hope of real­is­ti­cal­ly see­ing even half the pro­gramme, although the fes­ti­val has con­tin­ued to embrace online view­ing (some­thing that many fes­ti­vals have moved away from since the height of the Covid-19 pandemic).

But Tampere’s col­le­giate atmos­phere was a wel­come change of pace from the self-seri­ous vibes of many Euro­pean fes­ti­vals. Out­side of the film screen­ings, the city offers pic­turesque walks along the unique Tam­merkos­ki rapids, and is home to the world’s only Moomin muse­um, where vis­i­tors can learn about Tove Jansson’s sweet envi­ron­men­tal­ly-mind­ed crea­tures who con­tin­ue to enjoy nation­al trea­sure sta­tus in Fin­land. The city also has a thriv­ing bar and restau­rant scene, with our mem­o­rable final night din­ner at Apa­ja rank­ing among the best things I’ve ever eat­en, in or out of a film fes­ti­val blur. It’s easy to under­stand why the city has become pop­u­lar with Finns look­ing to escape Helsin­ki, and the film fes­ti­val plays no small part in this appeal.

The idio­syn­crat­ic awards cer­e­mo­ny offered anoth­er insight into Finnish cul­ture, with a duo per­form­ing a pan­pipe and moose antler-themed inter­pre­tive dance to kick things off. Although I’ve nev­er been to a cer­e­mo­ny with quite so many awards giv­en out, it was heart­en­ing to watch the gen­uine enthu­si­asm and excite­ment with which win­ners col­lect­ed their prizes, many of whom were lost for words. It was the com­plete antithe­sis of the usu­al fes­ti­val pomp and cir­cum­stance, giv­ing way to amus­ing­ly short speech­es and laugh­ter every time it emerged a win­ner wasn’t actu­al­ly there to pick up their award (such is the nature of the region­al short film festival).

But when one even­tu­al­ly tires of films, Lake Näsi­järvi is but a short 15-minute bus ride away from the cen­tre of Tam­pere. The 40km expanse of frozen ice offers prime real estate for sledg­ing and skat­ing (there’s noth­ing quite as hum­bling as hob­bling along the ice with all the skill of Bam­bi only to watch a small child zoom past on fig­ure skates), and if you make it far enough to the cen­tre, there’s a hut serv­ing up hot juice and fresh­ly-cooked sausages. It’s quite unlike any envi­ron­ment I’ve expe­ri­enced a film fes­ti­val in before, but one that I left with grat­i­tude for its wel­com­ing atmos­phere. The bruis­es on my legs from where I repeat­ed­ly decked it on the ice took much less time to fade than the warmth I felt at see­ing what a thriv­ing film com­mu­ni­ty exists in the frozen north.

Lit­tle White Lies were guests of Vis­it Tam­pere and the Tam­pere Film Fes­ti­val. This piece is not sponsored.