Jani, rest in peace

Joonas Neuvonen: Reindeerspotting – pako Joulumaasta / Reindeerspotting – Escape from Santaland (2010).

Yesterday the news spread that Jani, the protagonist of Reindeerspotting, is dead.

Reindeerspotting is a tough, compelling and poignant documentary film about a drug addict from Rovaniemi, one of the most Northern cities of the world. It has been exceptionally popular in the national cinema release, the most popular Finnish documentary film of the recent decades.

Reindeerspotting is a first-person narrative of Jani, who seemed profoundly lost. We viewers were moved and concerned whether he could find terra firma.

We hear now that Jani went to Far East at the time of the premiere of Reindeerspotting. He never came back. I for one would be interested to hear the follow-up story on what went wrong.

In Sweden, Stefan Jarl even directed a documentary trilogy following a group of outcasts of society over the years, also dealing with the drug scene (Dom kallar oss mods / They Call Us Misfits, 1968, Ett anständigt liv / A Decent Life, 1979, and the surprise ending Det sociala arvet / Generation to Generation, 1993).

NB. Later it was established that the death date of Jani Raappana was 7 July 2010.