Aurora (2019)

Mimosa Willamo in the title role: the life of the party in the arctic ghetto.

FI 2019. PC: Dionysos Films Oy. P: Max Malka. EX: Riina Hyytiä.
    D+SC: Miia Tervo. DP: Arsen Sarkisiants. AD: Kari Kankaanpää. Cost: Jouni Mervas. Makeup: Salla Yli-Luopa. M: Lau Nau. S: Micke Nyström. ED: Antti Reikko.
    C: Mimosa Willamo (Aurora), Amir Escandari (Darian), Elà Yildirim (Azar), Oona Airola (Kinky), Miitta Sorvali (Liisa), Ria Kataja (Tiina), Chike Ohanwe (Juha), Hannu-Pekka Björkman (Juha), Pamela Tola (Ulla).
    Loc: Rovaniemi (Lapland, Finland).
    104 min
    Premiere: 25 Jan 2019 - distributor: Oy Nordisk Film Ab.
    Festival premiere: 25 Jan 2019 Göteborg Film Festival, opening gala.
    Vimeo link viewed for Jussi Awards, on a 4K tv screen at home, 10 March 2020.

Official presentation: "One night at a hot-dog stand in Finnish Lapland, a commitment-phobic party animal, Aurora, meets Iranian Darian. Darian suddenly asks her to marry him. Darian needs to marry a Finnish woman to get an asylum for himself and his daughter. Aurora turns him down, as she is busy working as a nail technician and plans to move to Norway, away from her shit life. However, after meeting his sweet daughter, Aurora agrees to help him. As Aurora introduces numerous women to Darian, the two of them grow close. When the perfect wife candidate comes along, Darian and Aurora are faced with a difficult choice: pretend to be happy or to finally stop running."

"Aurora has won several prizes at festivals since its release in early 2019. It was Finland´s entry for the prestigious Nordic Council Film Prize."

HB in Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF): "The fresh new voice of Finnish cinema, Miia Tervo, is a genuine filmmaker who writes her own scripts. Aurora is more than the sum of its story and characters. It’s a fluffy romantic comedy with a message that bounces around but trusts the viewer. It is irritating, tickling and abrupt. Aurora gains speed with obscenities but evolves into a poetry of images. Scenes are filmed at funny angles. The viewers are kept on their toes. The movie develops from impressionistic glimpses into a solid portrait of a woman finding her path."

"Amir Escandari is an immigrant who must find a Finnish partner to marry so that his daughter can stay in Finland. Beautician Aurora dives deep into her regular party lifestyle before red flags start flying. Mimosa Willamo as Aurora oozes glamour against a backdrop of snow, smoke and fumes, almost like the super blonde Gena Rowlands, and even their survival stories bear resemblance. Miia Tervo skilfully carries the storylines that randomly encounter, rub together and smooth each other out." (HB, MSFF)

AA: The name Aurora may lead us to associations about Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights). Finland is a distant land, but even in Finland Lapland has connotations of Ultima Thule, a faraway place.

...

Here's another film that I should absolutely have seen a year ago already, but only every 35 years we move to a new cinema. It was not only that there was little time for anything else. I could have seen Aurora, but I could not have given it the attention it deserves. For many it was the film of the year and even the film of the decade. I am happy to sign up as a Miia Tervo fan, too, but I have liked Lumikko and Santra and the Talking Trees even more, and The Trial / It's All Right was for me the film of the year in world cinema in 2019.

Aurora is an engaging entry into the newly popular subgenre of Lapland films, the range of which goes from the Napapiirin sankarit [Heroes of the Polar Circle] comedy trilogy to the films by the Sami filmmaker Katja Gauriloff (Kaisa's Enchanted Forest). Miia Tervo is a born Laplander, and she brings a new and original voice also to this Bildungsroman of a young woman.

In Lapland forces of nature are extreme and people are spontaneous and unaffected. In the circumstances of kaamos (the 24-hour darkness in midwinter) hard partying is a natural reflex, and Aurora is the "life of the party" in the Arctic ghetto. More than that, she is compared with a typhoon, a hurricane, and other chaotic phenomena. Her father is an alcoholist, and during the film they are evicted.

During yet another night of hard partying Aurora meets an Iranian refugee, Darian, on the hot dog stand. He needs a green card, and only by marriage can that be achieved. Aurora has firm plans about moving to Norway (even further north, but because of the Gulf Stream the sea there is open all year). Having met Darian's 8-year old daughter she changes her mind. "I wanted to sublimate my own experiences of lacking prospects, shame and worthlessness into warm humour", writes Miia Tervo.

Among other things, Aurora is a film about racism, and the surprise twist of the movie is that the most terrible racist is the black Juha, a native Finn. It is also about ageism and how the human tornado Aurora revitalizes the ageing Liisa. Having become evicted Aurora gets a job as a live-in nurse to Liisa. The shocking solution turns out perfectly.