The Summer Book

 

Charlie McDowell: The Summer Book (US/FI/GB 2024). Emily Matthews (Sophia) and Glenn Close (grandmother).

Kesäkirja / Sommarboken. 

    US/FI/GB © 2024 Summer Book Movie LLC. PC: Stille Productions Ltd, Helsinki-filmi Oy, Case Study Films, High Frequency Entertainment, Free Range Films. P: Kath Mattock (Stille Productions), Aleksi Bardy (Helsinki-filmi Oy), Helen Vinogradov (Helsinki-filmi Oy), Alex Orlovsky (Case Study Films), Duncan Montgomery (High Frequency Entertainment), Kevin Loader (Free Range Films), Charlie McDowell, Glenn Close.

    D: Charlie McDowell. SC: Robert Jones – based on the novel Sommarboken (1972) by Tove Jansson. DP: Sturla Brandth Grøvlen – colour – release format: DCP. PD: Lina Nordqvist. Cost: Tiina Kaukanen. Makeup: Riikka Virtanen. M: Hania Rani. S: Micke Nyström. ED: Jussi Rautaniemi

    C: Glenn Close (grandmother), Emily Matthews (Sophia), Anders Danielsen Lie (father), Pekka Strang (Mr. Malander), Sophia Heikkilä (Mrs. Malander).

    Father's drawings: Sune Elskær.

    End credits: 8 mm footage by Tuulikki Pietilä of Tove Jansson at Klovharun (aka Haru) at the Pellinki island community in the outer archipelago off Porvoo. They spent summers at the cottage they built from April to October, from 1964 till 1991.

    Art by Sam Vanni and Unto Koistinen.

    Soundtrack: Harmony Sisters: "Laulu meripojille" (comp. + lyr. Kauko Käyhkö, 1939), "Sataman valot" (Harbour Lights, lyr. Jimmy Kennedy, comp. Hugh Williams = Will Grosz, 1937, Finnish lyr. Aimo Mustonen, 1937), "Pilven päällä taivaan alla" (comp. George de Godzinsky, lyr. Eine Laine, 1942), "Sulle salaisuuden kertoa mä voisin" (comp. George de Godzinsky, lyr. Eine Laine, 1950).

    Reading matter: Gottfried Keller: Der grüne Heinrich / Green Henry (1855), Eino Krohn: Hiljainen piiri (1927), Georges Simenon: L'Affaire Saint-Fiacre / Maigret kotikylässään (1932).

    Loc: the archipelagoes of Kotka and Porvoo at Suomenlahti / the Gulf of Finland.

    Language: English.

    95 min

    BFI London Film Festival, 2024

    AFI Fest Los Angeles (CA), 2024

    Stockholm International Film Festival, 2024

    Torino Film Festival, 2024

    Finnish premiere: 31 Jan 2025 – distributor: SF Studios – Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Janne Kauppila / Michaela Palmberg.

    2026 Jussi Awards Nominee: The Best Ensemble (Glenn Close, Emily Matthews).

    Vimeo link for Jussi Awards viewed at home in Paris, 23 Feb 2026

OFFICIAL INTRODUCTION: "Tove Janssonin rakastettuun Kesäkirja-teokseen perustuva elokuva kertoo maagisen ja elämää kohottavan tarinan Sophia-tytön (Emily Matthews) kesästä isoäidin (Glenn Close) kanssa pikkuisella saarella Suomenlahdella. Sophian isän (Anders Danielsen Lie) surressa puolisonsa kuolemaa meren aallot silittävät kalliota, aurinko paistaa ja puut kasvavat."

"Kesäkirja on kuvaus pienen tytön ja vanhan naisen ystävyydestä suomalaisen kesäunelman ympäröimänä, lähellä toisiaan ja lähellä luontoa. Elokuvassa Suomen kesä ja saaristoluonto ovat aidoimmillaan ja kauneimmillaan."

 

AA: Charlie McDowell has directed a movie based on Tove Jansson's The Summer Book, a beloved novel by the multi-talented artist. It has been translated into 35 languages. Fans reread it every summer.

Despite the name, the account covers three seasons: spring, summer and autumn. There are three main characters: the 11 year old Sophia, her father and her grandmother. The spring, summer and autumn of life. (Winter actually for grandmother, but she is young at heart).

There is no story. The film is a meditation and a celebration of life at its purest on the tiny islet which has no electricity. It is safe to assume that it takes place around 1972 when the novel was published. The circumstances are stripped to the barest essentials, but because of that the experience is that of a full intensity of being. A special experience for Sophia is to sleep alone in a tent. You hear more, you hear everything, you sense the whole island in the tent.

A retreat like this has a special weight this time. Sophia's mother has died, and she and her dad are in mourning, in the middle of Trauerarbeit. Grandmother warns them from self-pity. Life goes on. Death is a part of life.

Sophia is growing up, and she is still asking "chidren's science questions" such as "What is superstition?". She learns to dive. Life is transient, but the horizon remains forever. 

The view on the tiny island is never monotonous. The sea and the sky look different all the time. It rains and it shines. The sea is calm or stormy. The sun and the moon keep changing. You see the world from beneath the sea or from the top of the nearby lighthouse,

On an adjacent island another family has built a sophisticated villa. The contrast is as big as can be. They are nice, friendly and welcoming. But are they happier with all the comforts? Our protagonists prefer to face the elements directly.

In the end, Sophia receives from her father a book of his collected drawings of their summer together, a memento for life. It is called The Summer Book.

The film is a vision of pure, austere beauty. The bonding of the child and the grandmother is meaningful for both in a most profound way. Erik H. Erikson would have discovered in it a wonderful account of what he called "the life cycle completed". A little film about the biggest things.

Fleak: kekseliäs ystäväni / Fleak

 

Jens Møller: Fleak: kekseliäs ystäväni / Fleak (FI/PL/MY/FR 2025).

CGI Animation.

    Finland/Poland/Malaysia/France © 2025 Anima Vitae Oy / Animoon / Anima Vitae Point / Godo Films / Canal+ Poland. P: Antti Haikala, Jani Kuronen, Shieh Yuin Pang. Ass P: Timo Suomi. Co-P (Godo Films): Joelle Caroline. Co-P (Animoon): Grzegorz Wacławek.

    D: Jens Møller. SC: Antti Haikala, Melli Maikkula, Ilja Rautsi, Teemu Auersalo - story: Antti Haikala. Tech specs: colour – digital – release format: DCP. Visual design: Mikko Pitkänen. AN (director): Luca Bruno. AN (in charge): Raymond Koh (Anima Vitae), Katarzyna Olszewska (Animoon). CG supervisors: KS Chia Kah Seong, Jamie Dower. Supervising technical directors: Olli Rajala, Jani Kuronen. Lighting and compositing supervisor: Janne Mäkinen. VFX supervisor: Jussi Dittmer. M: Łukasz Targosz. S: Fanny Bricoteau, Kevin Feildel. ED: Antti Jääskeläinen.

    VOICE TALENT (FINNISH / ENGLISH):

Urho Kuokkanen / Owen de la Hoyde – Tuomas / Thomas

Ella Jaakkola / Tori Johnson – Ceci

Valtteri Turunen / Tom Hudson – Miki

Riku Leskinen / Paul Spera – Jaska / Jack

Petteri Summanen / Kester Lovelace – father / Dad

Sanna-June Hyde / Barbara Weber-Scaff – mother / Mum

Usva Kärnä / Laura Woody – lääkäri / doctor

Ella Pyhältö, Petteri Summanen, Pinja Hanski / all actors – maailmankaikkeuden ääni / The Great Entity

Kaycie Chase – Zouzou

Barbara Weber-Scaff – pikku-Fleakit / little Fleaks

David Coburn – Morphy ja varjohirviöt / Morphy and the Shadow Monsters

Antti Haikala – Fleak

    84 min

    Genre: family adventure

    Annecy International Animation Film Festival, 2025

    Busan International Kids and Youth Festival, 2025

    Children's International Film Festival Melbourne, 2025

    Finnish premiere: 5 Sep 2025 – distributor: SF Studios.

    2026 Jussi Awards Nominee: Best Visual Effects.

    Vimeo link for Jussi Awards viewed at home in Paris, 22 Feb 2026

IMDb STORYLINE: "A 12-year-old boy loses his ability to walk in an accident. Luckily a helpful furry creature from another dimension appears and takes the boy on a fantasy adventure, where he finds a way."

OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS: "11-year-old Thomas, follows his older siblings Miki and Ceci to a secret hideout. Eager to prove himself to his siblings and their older friend Jack, he has a tragic accident. Thomas loses his ability to walk."

"However, soon something exciting enters his life - Fleak, a tiny, furry, playful visitor from another dimension. Thomas befriends Fleak, who takes him to his own fantastical world into another dimension. In this world, Thomas manages to detach from his shadow and learns to walk again. The lonely shadow manages to attach to a local creature and turns into a huge shadow monster, threatening to eat Fleak’s world! After fighting the shadow monster in the other dimension it follows Thomas and is now threatening Thomas’ home!"

"Thomas must find a way to reconnect with his siblings. Together they will be able to team up and fight the goofy shadow monster. After defeating the monster, Thomas chooses to take his shadow back, even if it means returning to his wheelchair and walking exercises, but he has his siblings beside him now."

"Told from a child’s perspective, this powerful story shows how friendship, imagination and a kind heart can help overcome resentment."

AA: Jens Møller's Fleak impresses with its original animation concept. It is a disability story which turns into a story of willpower.

It starts in the world of childhood, the mayhem, bravado, daring and recklessness of children who must test their limits. An adventure against physical and mental boundaries.

An accident happens. Thomas's legs are injured, he loses his ability to walk and becomes confined to a wheelchair.

Rehabilitation is hard work. But Thomas has a connection to another dimension, and a creature called Fleak enters his existence, a gremlin wreaking havoc at his home at night. Only Thomas can see him.

Visiting the other dimension, his Shadow breaks loose and turns into a being from another world. It is an aspect of his astral body, the zone of transition between life and death. The film is lifted to an ecstatic level of spiritual space travel, a cosmic battle between being and nothingness.

The Shadow having turned semi-independent, Thomas keeps avoiding it, and when it follows him back home, it enters the family cat which begins to eat everything up, including the children, bursting into a King Kong size monster. A teardrop has the impact of reversing the cat back to normal, releasing the children. Thomas joins his shadow and resumes the hard work of rehabilitation.

I like the philosophical element. Fleak is a film about the mystery of life: the life force and the great spirit within. These are eternal issues which have puzzled us since Plato and beyond.

I have trouble relating to the visual aesthetics of the CGI and its synthetic, denatured colours. As always, human beings are the most difficult (perhaps impossible) subjects to convey in animation really well. True, little children are not as difficult, but these children are not little. At times I was thinking whether large machine-learning programs (I refuse to call them AI) might be involved. 

I am grateful for the spiritual experience. Only recently I have started to understand what Arthur Schopenhauer meant with The World as Will and Representation. Fleak belongs to movies relevant to his philosophy.

Elämä on juhla / Summer Is Crazy

 

Ulla Heikkilä: Elämä on juhla / Summer Is Crazy (FI 2025). Pirjo Lonka as Hannele Eerola.

Livet är en fest.

    FI © 2025 Tekele Productions Oy. P: Marja Pihlaja

D+SC: Ulla Heikkilä. DP: Sari Aaltonen – colour – release format: DCP. PD: Juha-Matti Toppinen.  Cost: Roosa Marttiini. Makeup: Kaisu Hölttä. M: Matti Ahopelto. Soundtrack: see below. S: Arttu Hokkanen. ED: Hanna Kuirinlahti. Dramaturge: Jan Forsström.

    CAST

Pirjo Lonka / Hannele Eerola

Aamu Milonoff / Selma Eerola

Jani Volanen / Otso Eerola

Bruno Baer / Arttu

Jussi Vatanen / Samppa

Ada Pesso / Eeva Eerola

Ulla Tapaninen / Marjukka Eerola

Tommi Eronen / Kari

Pia Andersson / Titta

Johanna af Schultén / Gunilla

Kaija Pakarinen / Vuokko

Aksa Korttila / Dora

Mitra Matouf / Mariam

Edit Williams / Melissa

Bruno Ulf Nikander / Tommen

Tobias Zilliacus / Jacke

    OTHER PERFORMERS

Kuisma: Kuisma the dog

Tihu: the wolf

    Loc: the islands Nauvo and Seili at Pargas / Parainen in the Archipelago Sea.

    101 min

    Genre: drama

    Finnish premiere: 3 Sep 2025 – distributor: SF Studios.

    2026 Jussi Awards Nominee: The Best Ensemble (Bruno Baer, Aamu Milonoff) and The Breakthrough Role of the Year (Bruno Baer)

    Vimeo link for Jussi Awards viewed at home in Paris, 21 Feb 2026

NB. Elämä on juhla is also the Finnish title of Et la fête continue ! / And the Party Goes On (FR/IT 2023) by Robert Guédiguian.

ELONET SYNOPSIS: "Komediankin sävyjä saava draama Elämä on juhla (2025) on Ulla Heikkilän toinen pitkä fiktioelokuva, jonka hän on sekä ohjannut että käsikirjoittanut. Eletään juhannuksen aikaa Nauvossa. Otso Eerola (Jani Volanen) on masentunut ravintolansa mentyä konkurssiin, ja vaimo Hannele (Pirjo Lonka) pyörittää arkea parhaansa mukaan. Aikuistuva tytär Selma (Aamu Milonoff) tekee asiakkailleen tekoripsiä ja haluaa pois Nauvosta. Hän tutustuu Arttuun (Bruno Baer), joka saapuu viettämään juhannusta isänsä, purjeveneessä asustavan entisen Idols-tähden Sampan (Jussi Vatanen) luo. Ihmisten erilaiset tarpeet ja yritykset ratkaista tilanteita törmäävät toisiinsa monin tavoin keskikesän auringon alla."

AA: Ulla Heikkilä's Elämä on juhla [literally: Life Is a Feast] is her second feature film, following the superb debut Eden (2020).

Both are summer films shot in fabulous locations, Eden at an idyllic retreat at Kirkkonummi in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area, Elämä on juhla at Nauvo in the Pargas archipelago on the west coast. The midsummer landscape is the supreme production value. People shine in the midnight sun.

They some of the cast. The main couple Aamu Milonoff (Selma) and Bruno Baer (Arttu) carried leading roles also in Eden. Jani Volanen also appears in both. 

In both, young protagonists are the future. Elämä on juhla is a coming-of-age story of the young leads – and a study of the depression of the fathers.

Selma's father Otso (Jani Volanen), a restaurant entrepreneur, has gone bankrupt. Arttu's father Samppa (Jussi Vatanen) is a former Idols star who has lost his following. Both are losers. There is also a winner, the successful hotel owner Kari (Tommi Eronen) with whom Selma's mother Hannele (Pirjo Lonka) is having an affair. The alpha male is busy with three simultaneous affairs.

Much of the movie is downbeat. A curious music choice for Midsummer, the celebration of summer love, is Mozart's Requiem – a Mass for the Dead. Another weird feature is the emphasis on anguish and sorrow in a predominantly Swedish-speaking community, known for its glad and positive ambience.

Otso is a failed restaurant owner and Samppa a failed artist, both professions in crisis in the 2020s because of the pandemic, the internet, and remote work. The world-historical circumstances go unmentioned. In the movie we only see the private pain and unconvincing self-justifications of the alcoholic Otso and the drug-addicted Samppa.

An aspect which reveals that the movie takes place in the 2020s is the dialogue of the young people, the Tik Tok speak. For me it resembles pidgin dialogue written for non-English peoples in colonial-era films from the 1930s through the 1960s.

Elämä on juhla belongs to the matriarchal tradition in Finnish fiction. Men are weak and women strong enough to carry the responsibility alone. The implication is that women are better off without men. Men are a necessary evil, and not even that necessary.

A transcendent dimension opens in music. Besides Mozart, there is a beloved Swedish traditional sing-along "Vem kan segla förutan vind?" meaning "Who Can Sail Without Wind?". During the end credits we hear Anneli Saaristo's power ballad "La dolce vita" (despite the name, a Finnish original written for the Eurovision song contest). Three different songs on the soundtrack share this title. Federico Fellini's movie title was one of tragic irony, an aspect the songs do not share. Ulla Heikkilä does.

I believe to identify a phenomenon in the cinema of the 2020s which I call the "pandemic phlegmatic syndrome". All ingredients are excellent, but momentum is missing. Perhaps because of remote work or similar. There are long breaks during every motion picture shoot. People glued to their mobile devices are irritated to be interrupted and asked to perform. Eden had a wonderful electric current essential for a great movie. I miss it in Elämä on juhla.

...

SOUNDTRACK

TWO SONGS WRITTEN FOR THE MOVIE

"Samppa – Elämä on juhla" (2025)

Säv., san., sov. Matti Ahopelto, Tapio Viitasaari

Tuotanto Matti Ahopelto

Esittäjät Jussi Vatanen, Joel Mäkinen

"Samppa – Selviin viel" (2025)

Säv., san., sov. Matti Ahopelto, Tapio Viitasaari

Tuotanto Matti Ahopelto

Esittäjä Jussi Vatanen

OTHER

"Dolce vita" (1983)

Esittäjä Ryan Paris

säv., san. Pierluigi Giombini, Paul Mazzolini

℗ & © ZYX Music / Edition Björlund Ab

Requiem in d-Moll, KV 626: III. Sequenz: 6. "Lacrimosa dies illa" (1791)

Esittäjä: Schultz, Wundsam, Mitterrutzner, Montanari

säv.: W. A. Mozart, sanat: messuliturgiaa

Licensed courtesy of Dynamic

"Vem kan segla förutan vind?" [Who Can Sail Without Wind?] (1909)

Esittäjä Cumulus & kuoro: Vita Edvards, Emilia Mäenmaa, Jussi Puukka, Tomas Viljasalo

Trad. (partly from 18th century), sov. Sakari Lehtinen

℗ 1971 Discophon

"La dolce vita" (2004)

Esittäjä After Dark

säv., san. Larry Forsberg, Lennart Wastesson, Sven-Inge Sjöberg

© & ℗ Start Klart Records 2004

"Quando me'n vo'" oopperasta La Bohème (1896)

säv. Giacomo Puccini

san. Giuseppe Giacosa, Luigi Illica

laulaja Inka Laitinen, säestäjä Niilo Autio

"Happy Birthday, Mr. President"

laulaja Aksa Korttila, säestäjä Sasja Montonen

Traditional

"La dolce vita" (1989)

Esittäjä Anneli Saaristo

säv. Matti Puurtinen

san. Turkka Mali

© Ensio Music Ltd

℗ Turun Tähtituotanto Oy

OFFICIAL

SYNOPSIS

Elämä on juhla on juhannuselokuva Eerolan perheen keskikesän juhlasta Nauvossa. Huumoria pilkahtelevassa ihmissuhdedraamassa rakastutaan, petytään ja juhlistetaan yötöntä yötä. Saaristojuhannuksen jälkeen ei kenenkään elämä ole entisensä. 

  

Keskikesä on kauneimmillaan ja juhannus lähestyy, mutta Nauvon saaristolaisidyllissä ja Eerolan perheessä onni rakoilee: konkurssiin mennyt ravintola, salasuhteen aloittanut äiti (Pirjo Lonka), itsetunto-ongelmien kanssa kamppaileva isä (Jani Volanen) ja olosuhteiden vangiksi jäänyt kyyninen teinitytär (Aamu Milonoff). Naapurissa asuva entinen Idols-tähti (Jussi Vatanen) haikailee menetettyä menestystä ja saa vieraaksi etäiseksi jääneen, uteliaan ja maailmalle avoimen poikansa (Bruno Baer). Juhannusviikon aikana heistä jokainen joutuu kohtaamaan elämänsä sellaisena kuin se on – kudelmana pettymyksiä ja onnea, juhlana joka jatkuu, kunnes kerran päättyy.

OHJAAJA-KÄSIKIRJOITTAJAN SANA

  

Elämä on juhla on juhannusviikkoon ajoittuva ensembledraama, jossa on myös koomisia ja satiirisia sävyjä. Elokuva sijoittuu Nauvoon, Turun saaristoon – idylliseen ja kutsuvaan paikkaan, joka on monelle tuttu ennen kaikkea kesänviettopaikkana tai purjehduskohteena. Kiinnostuin Nauvosta, kun vietin siellä yhden kesän puolisoni ollessa töissä kesäkahvilassa. Nauvo ja saaristo ylipäätään alkoivat näyttäytyä paitsi konkreettisena paikkana, myös utopiana ja toiveiden tynnyrinä: mentaalisena tilana, jossa elämä on jollain lailla vapaampaa, aidompaa ja onnellisempaa. Halusin kertoa tarinan ihmisistä, jotka ovat muuttaneet Nauvoon erilaisten haavekuvien perässä, mutta joutuvat siellä toteamaan, että unelmille rakennettu uusi elämä ei takaakaan onnea. Lopulta kukin meistä joutuu elämään oman arkisen ja keskeneräisen itsensä kanssa, eikä ole olemassa viimeistä rantaa, jolle itseään voisi paeta.

  

Olen aina tuntenut vetoa tarinoihin, joissa on paljon keskushenkilöitä, sillä minusta on kiehtovaa katsoa maailmaa useamman kuin yhden henkilön silmin. Kaikki ihmiset ovat yhtä täynnä elämää: salattuja toiveita ja pelkoja, mittaamattomasti kokemuksia ja näkemystä. Jokainen henkilö – jokainen ihminen – kantaa sisällään kokonaista maailmaa. Fiktiivisen maailman hahmottaminen usean keskushenkilön silmin on tapani muistaa, että me olemme yhtä suuria ja yhtä syviä kaikki.

  

Vakavista teemoistaan huolimatta elokuva ei ole synkkä, eikä sen nimi ole ironinen. Sillä elämä todella myös on juhla, käsittämätön ihme täynnä onnea ja mahdollisuuksia. Musiikkiteoriassa käytetään sanaa kontrapunkti kuvaamaan kahta samanaikaista melodiaa, jotka ovat sekä itsenäisiä että harmoniassa. Sellaista ääntä olen tässä elokuvassa tavoitellut: että voisi antaa monta merkitystä, jotka ovat näennäisesti päinvastaisia, mutta kuitenkin totta samaan aikaan.

 

Ennen kaikkea tämä elokuva on ylistyslaulu elämälle kaikessa sotkuisuudessaan. Se on katkeransuloinen kudelma halua ja pettymystä, rakkautta joka alkaa, ja rakkautta joka päättyy. Joskus ilo ja suru asustavat samassa paikassa, ja kesällä yökin on täynnä valoa. Jokainen sydän kantaa sisällään monta totuutta ja laulaa monta sävelmää.

  

Ulla Heikkilä

TUOTTAJAN SANA

Elämä on juhla on kotimainen laatudraama, jossa näkyy käsikirjoittaja-ohjaaja Ulla Heikkilän erityinen kyky kuvata ihmissuhteita ja suomalaisen juhlapyhän viettoon tiivistyvää elämää niin raastavana ja koomisena kuin se kulloinkin näyttäytyy. Suomen kesän valoon, juhannukseen ja saaristoon sijoittuva elokuva on Ullan, näyttelijöiden ja koko työryhmän taidonnäyte, josta olen tuottajana valtavan ylpeä. Elokuvan karvaitakin teemoja ja henkilöitä voisi käsitellä myös kyynisesti, mutta Ulla katsoo epätäydellisiä ja töpeksiviä hahmoja aina lopulta lämmöllä ja empatialla. Se on maailmankuva ja ihmiskuva, jonka takana seison ilolla.

Elämä on juhla on esikoiselokuvani pitkän elokuvan tuottajana. Oma ammatillinen yhteistyöni ja ystävyys Ullan kanssa on kestänyt vuosia, ja yhdessä tekeminen on ollut aina poikkeuksellisella tavalla kepeää. Ullalla on näkemystä ja hän tietää mitä tekee. Näistä syistä hänen kynästään syntyy omaäänisiä elokuvia, jotka jäävät ihmisten mieleen. Elämä on juhla on tällainen elokuva.

Marja Pihlaja

  

ELOKUVAN HAHMOT

Hannele on perheensä kantava ja koossapitävä voima, jonka rakoileva luottamus elämässä tehtyihin valintoihin heijastuu muihin perheenjäseniin. Voimakastahtoisuudestaan huolimatta Hannele on tottunut myötäilemään miestään Otsoa, jonka ravintolan konkurssin jälkeen Hannele on hankkinut työpaikan Karin hotellista ja aloittanut suhteen pomonsa kanssa. Hannele on elämänhaluinen ihminen, jonka on vaikea sopeutua Otson erakoituvaan luonteeseen.

Pirjo Lonka näyttelee Hanne Eerolaa.

Otso on toisaalta kuin myrskypilvi ja toisaalta kuin kevätauringon ensimmäiset säteet. Innostuessaan jostakin Otso levittää energiaa kaikkiin ympärillään, ja siksi hän saa toiset seuraamaan omia mielihalujaan. Ravintolansa konkurssin jälkeen Otso on vaipunut masennukseen ja alkanut vihata Nauvon ihmisiä ja eläimiä.

Jani Volanen näyttelee Otso Eerolaa.

  

Selma on elämäänsä kyllästynyt nuori kyynikko. Hänet on raastettu tutusta kaveripiiristä vaikeasti saavutettavaan saaristoon kesken kiihkeimmän teini-iän. Selman on vaikea antaa anteeksi vanhemmilleen sitä, että hän on jumissa inhoamassaan Nauvossa. Selman tavoitteena on palata Helsinkiin ja muuttaa omilleen. Hänellä ei ole läheisiä ystäviä ennen kuin juhannuksenviettoon ilmestyvä Arttu onnistuu vilpittömyydellään murtamaan Selman muurit.

Aamu Milonoff näyttelee Selma Eerolaa.

  

Eeva on Selman pikkusisko, iloinen tyyppi, joka haluaisi elämäänsä seikkailuja, laulunumeroita ja seuraa. Kun vanhemmat ja isosisko oireilevat kukin tahoillaan, Eeva joutuu viettämään paljon aikaa itsekseen. Eeva tulee hyvin toimeen isänsä kanssa, johon muiden on vaikea saada kontaktia.

Ada Pesso näyttelee Eeva Eerolaa

  

Marjukka, Otson äiti, on vetäytynyt viettämään eläkepäiviä kesäpaikalleen Nauvoon. Marjukka haluaisi nauttia talonsa ja puutarhansa rauhasta, mutta se on vaikeaa, kun poika perheineen asuu siellä. Hän etsiikin sielunrauhaa lähinnä lopetetun ravintolan viinivarastosta. Marjukka on omanarvontuntoinen matriarkka, joka ei pelkää sanoa suoria sanoja tutuille tai tuntemattomille.

Ulla Tapaninen näyttelee Marjukka Eerolaa.

  

Arttu tulee juhannukseksi Nauvoon tapaamaan isäänsä, purjeveneessä asuvaa Samppaa, jota hän ei ole nähnyt vuosiin. Arttulla on etäiset välit isäänsä, mutta hän kokee olevansa nyt tarpeeksi kypsä aloittaakseen isänsä kanssa puhtaalta pöydältä. Arttu on hyvin vilpitön ja suorasukainen, ja hänellä on omalaatuinen tapa olla sosiaalisissa tilanteissa. Hän suhtautuu uteliaisuudella muiden ihmisten elämään, ja kertoo avoimesti myös omastaan. Arttu on vähän vanha sielu.

Bruno Baer näyttelee Arttua.

  

Samppa on veneessä asuva entinen Idols-tähti ja nykyinen jokapaikan höylä. Sampan laulajanura on tyssännyt lyhyeen ja sössittyään raha-asiansa Samppa on viettänyt kiertelevää elämää. Sampalla on ollut ongelmia alkoholin ja huumeiden kanssa, mutta hän on kuitenkin onnistunut pysymään sen verran hyvässä kunnossa, että ongelmia ei havaitse päälle päin. Samppa suhtautuu edelleen kaihoisasti laulajanuraansa, ja pääseekin yllättäen keikalle Nauvoon.

Jussi Vatanen näyttelee Samppaa.

Kari on bisnesmies ja hyväntekijä, joka omistaa muun muassa hotellin, Hannelen työpaikan. Kari oli myös sijoittanut vähän rahaa Otson ja Hannelen ravintolaan ennen sen konkurssia. Yrittäjänä Kari on onnistunut saavuttamaan mukavan elintason. Hän on leppoisa naistenmies, jota monet rakastavat. Naissuhteissaan Kari on rehellinen huijari, sillä hän itse uskoo aina puhuvansa totta.

Tommi Eronen näyttelee Karia

  

Titta on Karin vaimo ja selvästi miestään nuorempi kaunotar. Titan ei varsinaisesti tarvitse tehdä töitä, ja hän on jumahtanut kotirouvaksi: pitkille lounaille vierasvenesatamassa ja golf-klubille. Titta rakastaa edelleen Karia, mutta väillä hän ei ymmärrä, mitä ihmettä he tekevät Nauvossa. Titta ihailee ja inhoaa suomenruotsalaisia, koska pelkää että nämä katsovat häntä aina ja ikuisesti alaspäin.

Pia Andersson näyttelee Tittaa

Tekele Productions

Tekele Productions on perustettu vuonna 2017. Yhtiö kehittelee ja tuottaa elokuvia ja televisiosarjoja kotimaisille ja kansainvälisille yleisöille. Viimeisin julkaistu elokuva on Anna Brotkinin käsikirjoittama ja Jenni Toivoniemen ohjaama elokuva Perhoset syksyltä 2024. Viimeisin julkaistu sarja on nuortensarja Räjähdysherkkä ja sen toinen tuotantokausi. Helsingin Kalasatamassa toimivassa yhtiöllä on kehittelyssä useita kotimaisia ja kansainvälisiä elokuvia ja sarjoja sen kolmen tuottajan toimesta. 

www.tekele.fi

SF Studios 

SF Studios on ollut Pohjoismaiden johtava elokuvayhtiö sadan vuoden ajan. Sillä on pääkonttori Tukholmassa ja tytäryhtiöt Norjassa, Tanskassa ja Suomessa. SF Studios tuottaa viihdesisältöä valkokankaalle, televisioon ja tallennelevitykseen. Lisäksi se on johtava pohjoismaisen ja ulkomaisen elokuvan levitysyhtiö Pohjoismaiden markkinoilla. Liiketoiminta-alueita ovat pohjoismainen tuotanto sekä pohjoismaiset ja kansainväliset yhteistuotannot, elokuvateatteri- ja Home Entertainment -levitys, kansainvälinen myynti ja digitaaliset suoratoistopalvelut.

L’Œil de Roger Corbeau : Photographies de cinéma (exhibition at Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé, Paris)

Catalogue : Isabelle Champion & Stéphanie Salmon (commissariat): L’Œil de Roger Corbeau : Photographies de cinéma. Broché. 19,5 x 26 cm. 180 pages. Six cahiers iconographiques, plus de 150 photographies. Filmographie. ISBN 978-2-9598809-1-9. Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé, 2025. Cover photo from: Julien Duvivier: La Femme et le pantin / The Female (FR/IT 1958) based on the novel by Pierre Louÿs and starring Brigitte Bardot (1934–2025) as Eva Marchand.

I

Raymond Rouleau: Les Sorcières de Salem / The Crucible (FR/DD 1957). Mylène Demongeot as Abigail in a film based on the play by Arthur Miller. Photo: Roger Corbeau.

Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé

73 avenue des Gobelins, 75013 Paris

http://www.fondation-jeromeseydoux-pathe.com/

Du 23 octobre 2025 au 21 février 2026

OFFICIEL: " Considéré comme l’un des plus importants photographes de cinéma des années 1930 à 1980, Roger Corbeau a débuté sa carrière avec Marcel Pagnol et a contribué à l’univers esthétique de films tels que Toni de Jean Renoir, De Mayerling à Sarajevo de Max Ophuls, Macadam de Marcel Blistène et Jacques Feyder, Le Journal d'un curé de campagne de Robert Bresson, Pattes blanches de Jean Grémillon, La Fête à Henriette de Julien Duvivier, Les Parents terribles et Orphée de Jean Cocteau, Gervaise de René Clément, Les Sorcières de Salem de Raymond Rouleau, Les Misérables de Jean-Paul Le Chanois, La Loi de Jules Dassin, mais aussi M. Arkadin et Le Procès, d'Orson Welles et Violette Nozière de Claude Chabrol. Près de 150 films en 50 ans de carrière ! "

" Fasciné depuis son adolescence par le cinéma et les acteurs, Roger Corbeau collectionne les photographies, les livres et les revues, qui ne cesseront de l’inspirer. "

" Maitre du noir et du blanc, il s’impose comme un grand portraitiste, puis apprivoise la couleur avec un goût très sûr. Son style singulier, immédiatement reconnaissable, fait de contraste appuyés ou d’effets charbonneux, sublime et immortalise Arletty, Brigitte Bardot, Faye Dunaway, Fernandel, Jodie Foster, Louis de Funès, Jean Gabin, Annie Girardot, Isabelle Huppert, Louis Jouvet, Sophia Loren, ou encore Jean Marais, Mélina Mercouri, Raimu, Simone Signoret et Michel Simon. "

" Réalisée à partir du fonds Roger Corbeau et de ses collections, l’exposition de la Fondation Pathé rendra hommage à un illustre photographe dont l’œuvre est à redécouvrir. "

AA: Roger Corbeau, the great still photographer, was born to a bourgeois Alsatian Jewish family on 20 November, 1908 in Haguenau, Alsace-Lorraine, then in Deutsches Kaiserreich, and died on 11 September 1995 at age 86 in the 17th arrondissement of Paris. He was buried in the Jewish graveyard of Haguenau in Bas-Rhin in the Grand Est without religious ceremony but with the inscription "Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur, Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres".

Corbeau's cinephilia started in boyhood, his idols ranging from Pearl White and Lillian Gish to Carl Th. Dreyer and Fritz Lang. He became an avid collector of stills, posters and movie magazines. As a wardrobe and props assistant he entered in 1932 the circle of Marcel Pagnol, who noticed Corbeau's talent as a photographer. 

A delightful serving of early cinephilia launches the exhibition which segues into the Pagnol period with Jofroi, Angèle, Merlusse, Le Schpountz and La Femme du boulanger and further to Jean Renoir's Toni, produced by Pagnol. 

The post-war period ends with Max Ophuls's De Mayerling à Sarajevo. Then comes what Corbeau called the "interruption par la guerre". During the Nazi occupation he enters a hidden life for five years, still working, but not under his own name. Having been turned back from Switzerland where he sought refuge, he joins the French Resistance as a maquisard.

After the war, Corbeau has the chance to pursue his passion for Dreyerian laconicism in Jean Grémillon's Pattes blanches, Jean Delannoy's La Symphonie pastorale, Maurice Cloche's Monsieur Vincent and Robert Bresson's Le Journal d'un curé de campagne. For Jean Cocteau he works in Orphée, and for Jean Marais much longer in his popular assignments. For Orson Welles, Corbeau makes the photographs for Mr. Arkadin and The Trial (at the then empty Gare d'Orsay). René Clément's Gervaise (after Émile Zola) is among his highlights of the 1950s. Corbeau is favoured by Yves Montand, Simone Signoret and Jean-Paul Le Chanois, as well as Jules Dassin and Melina Mercouri.

Corbeau meets the new artistic world of the 1960s in La Prisonnière by Henri-Georges Clouzot. In the 1970s he finds a new regular artistic partner: Claude Chabrol, the collaboration continuing until his last assignment, the English-language adaptation of Simone de Beauvoir's novel The Blood of Others, a French Resistance story starring Jodie Foster.

Corbeau excels in his coverage of the humanist realism of Pagnol and Renoir, the Orphic poetry of Cocteau and the stoic devotion of Bresson. He is a master of composition and lighting. 

His greatest talent is in the portrait. Today we think that everybody is a photographer. Yes, but few are great. A photograph of artistic value is a relationship between the subject and the artist. The artist sees the subject and vice versa. A trust is established. There is a lifetime of experience involved on both sides. The photograph is about the visible surface, but a backstory reaches into the unconscious. Eyes are the mirror of the soul. A true photograph is a confession of intimacy.

Such intimate confessions are Roger Corbeau's portraits. A striking feature: there is hardly ever a smile. Many have a wistful look, like they have just heard something that will change their lives.

Corbeau loved to photograph women, but there is no male gaze in the catalogue. Perhaps because it is edited by women? Corbeau never married, whatever that may imply. Corbeau adores women. They are subjects, not objects, from Arletty, Michèle Morgan and Danièle Darrieux to Faye Dunaway, Isabelle Huppert and Jodie Foster. His portraits of the sex symbols Martine Carol, Brigitte Bardot and Sophia Loren highlight the human being. At the end of his career, in 1983, Corbeau photographed his childhood idol Lillian Gish. She smiles tenderly.

Claude Chabrol: The Blood of Others (US/FR/CA 1984). Jodie Foster as Hélène in the English-language Resistance drama based on a novel by Simone de Beauvoir. Photo: Roger Corbeau. The last movie in the Corbeau filmography. 

Gerhard Richter (2026 exhibition at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris)

The catalogue. Nicholas Serota & Dieter Schwarz (ed.): Gerhard Richter. Fondation Louis Vuitton (Paris). 499 pages. 400 illustrations. 24,5 x 30,5 cm. Hard cover. Language editions in German, French and English. Publishing house of the French editions: Citadelles & Mazenod, 2025. Cover art from: Gerhard Richter, Gudrun, 1987 (CR 633), detail. Oil on four canvases, 260 x 200 cm each. Neue Nationalgalerie, Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin, loan from Gerhard Richter Art Foundation. © Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris Gerhard Richter 2025 (18102025). Please click on the photo to expand it.

 

Fondation Louis Vuitton

8 avenue du Mahatma Gandhi ; 75116 Paris ; Jardin d'acclimatisation de Paris ; Bois de Boulogne.

Exposition du 17.10.2025 au 2.3.2026.

275 works (oil paintings, glass and steel sculptures, pencil and ink drawings, watercolours and overpainted photographs)

In partnership with France Culture.

Commissariat: Dieter Schwarz et Nicholas Serota.

    Visited on 18 Feb 2026

AA: Visiting the magnificent Gerhard Richter retrospective is entering in chronological order a lifetime of art in many periods, approaches and techniques. 

There cannot be many active artists born in the Weimar Republic, but Richter is one of them.  He grew up in Nazi Germany, got his academic education at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts in the German Democratic Republic, and found his voice in the Federal Republic of Germany where he signed the Opus 1 of his Catalogue Raisonnée in 1962.

A key continuity through the diversity is a refusal of the live model, whether a person, a landscape or a still life. There is no immediate experience, direct observation or unmediated perception. There is always a photograph, a magazine, a book page, an illustration or a pre-existing artwork. Richter's art is often a photorealistic, illusionistic, mimetic image of an image.

Richter's art is a grand remise en cause, a calling into question of perception. His art consists of perceptions of perceptions. It is knowledge about knowledge, reflection about reflection. All art has a dimension of philosophy, and Richter's more than most.

Two years ago the 150th anniversary of impressionism was celebrated, and it was an occasion to rethink about the epochal self-reflective turn it brought in art. Impressionists painted from live models, and they went further than before, because they had a new awareness of the ephemeral and temporary, the incessant changes of lights and shadows, clouds, mists, smokes and other air pollutions, temperatures, radiations and reflections, even the moods that guide our perceptions. They saw both the object and the atmosphere. They were aware of the subject in the depiction of the object. In the instant they found eternity.

Impressionists were philosophers of the immediate experience, consciously or intuitively. Gerhard Richter's world is different. He lives in the society of spectacle. He swims in a deluge of images, keeping his distance, fighting back. He came of age as an artist during Pop Art. Now he faces the virtual world of the Internet.

Besides meta-imagery, a major current in Richter's work is abstraction. Among his abstractions are series of paintings which begin with a highly transformed but still recognizable reflection of another painting such as Tizian's Annunciation. Subsequent paintings move further away from the original and end in pure abstractions.

Richter's work is also essential from the perspective of the end of art, the rejection of the classical tenets of the beautiful and the sublime. There is no agreement about a terminology for the non-beautiful and the non-sublime. Much modern art looks ugly and/or banal from the traditional perspective, but what it actually is is something beyond the conventional. It may be challenging, unsettling, disturbing, transcendent, illuminating. Whatever it is, it doesn't let us in peace.

From metamorphosed pictures in magazines the exhibition proceeds to paternal family photo albums and romantic landscapes (Gallery 1) to a portrait gallery of 48 public figures, classic subjects from lakes and meadows to starry skies and seascapes and from pointillist wall-sized mosaics of pure colours to abstract pencil drawings (Gallery 2). (There is no Gallery 3 in the exhibition).

In Gallery 4 we meet outsized elongated 20 meter long paintings whose subject is an endless brushstroke. We are also allowed to study a set of 120 photographs of an image. From l'art pour l'art emphases Richter moves to the disturbing topic of terrorism in the 6 October 1977 cycle (Gallery 5). Richter also works on paper, pursuing both the colourism of watercolours and the black and white glory of pencil drawings. He creates Eckspiegel, mutually reflective monochromatic corner mirrors. He paints giant abstractions in which he uses besides the paintbrush also a palette knife and a squeegee. He devotes intimate series of paintings to his own family with three children  (Gallery 6).

Mirrors reflect masks. In Gallery 4 there is a wall-length horizontal mirror. "Don't blame the mirror if your face is crooked" (Nikolai Gogol). In Gallery 7, there is a 11-layered mirror, whose image resembles the blur characteristic of Richter's oil paintings. Impressionists integrated reflections in their visions. Richter finds in reflections the very subjects of his glass sculptures and installations. (There is no Gallery 8).

One of the grandest exhibits is the abstract Cage cycle in Gallery 9, devoted to the composer John Cage. Gradually taking absence from painting, Richter produced a series called Strips by digital processing.

His abstract ventures range from wild, jarring colour dysfunctions to works which take absence even from the nonfigurative. The Black Square could be seen as a defiant end-of-art statement of the Age of Empire, but Richter goes further with gray rectangles – they are not even black. A similar impact is in series of paintings in dirty colours. In Gallery 11 we discover the latest drawings, conducted in line, frottage or tone. The last mirrors are startlingly gray.

In the last corner of Gallery 10 we face what for me is the terminus: four photographs, the only ones that remain of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp when it was still active, taken by prisoners. Reflecting on them, Richter created four abstract paintings. The Richter family also had a Holocaust victim: Gerhard's beloved aunt Marianne was murdered in the euthanasia project by the Nazis because of her mental illness.

The exhibition was packed. Waiting in the long line to the coat rack I asked how fellow visitors would rank the show on the Richter scale, used to measure earthquakes. "Ten" was the answer. I remembered a quote from This Is Spinal Tap, directed by Rob Reiner (1947–2025): "These go to eleven".

PS 1. This is my second Gerhard Richter exhibition. I also saw the 2012 Gerhard Richter: Panorama exhibition at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, seminal for me for personal reasons. It was my first true Gerhard Richter experience, and I did not know if I liked it. Or whether it is even meant to be liked. Certainly it does not leave me indifferent. The Panorama exhibition with 145 artworks was a disturbing overview. The Louis Vuitton show with 275 artworks has a magnificent epic flow of the life and times of the thinking artist.

PS 2. The biggest change is that in 2012 it was still possible to see art in a museum. In 2026 it is no longer possible. The brightest and the most prominent thing on display is no longer art but the mobile screens of the audience. The eye registers best to what is brightest in the field of vision. Everything else is reduced to a secondary place. I visited the Louis Vuitton exhibition and looked, but it was not possible to see in the true meaning of how art is meant to be seen.

...

OFFICIAL INTRODUCTION: "From October 17, 2025 to March 2, 2026, the Fondation presents a major retrospective of works by Gerhard Richter—one of the most influential contemporary artists—born in Dresden in 1932. He fled East Germany for Düsseldorf in 1961 before settling in Cologne, where he currently lives and works."

"Continuing its tradition of landmark monographic exhibitions devoted to leading figures of 20th and 21st-century art — including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Joan Mitchell, Mark Rothko, and David Hockney — the Fondation dedicates all its galleries to Gerhard Richter, widely regarded as one of the most important and internationally celebrated artists of his generation."

"Gerhard Richter was featured in the inaugural presentation of the Fondation Louis Vuitton in 2014, with a group of works from the Collection. Now, the Fondation is honoring the artist with an exceptional retrospective — unmatched both in scale and in chronological scope — featuring 275 works stretching from 1962 to 2024. The exhibition includes oil paintings, glass and steel sculptures, pencil and ink drawings, watercolors, and overpainted photographs. For the first time, an exhibition will offer a comprehensive view of over six decades of Gerhard Richter’s creation - an artist whose greatest joy has always been working in his studio."

"Gerhard Richter has always been drawn to both subject matter and the very language of painting — a field of experimentation whose boundaries he has continually pushed, avoiding any singular categorization. His training at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts led him to engage with traditional genres such as still life, portraiture, landscape, and history painting. His desire to reinterpret these genres through a contemporary lens lies at the heart of this exhibition. Regardless of subject, Richter never paints directly from nature or from the scene before him: every image is filtered through an intermediary medium — through a photograph or a drawing — from which he constructs a new, autonomous work. Over time, he has explored an extraordinary range of genres and techniques within painting, developing various methods of applying paint to canvas — whether with a brush, a palette knife, or a squeegee."

"The exhibition brings together many of Richter’s most significant works up to his decision in 2017 to stop painting, while continuing to draw. Presented in chronological order, each section spans approximately a decade and traces the evolution of a singular pictorial vision — one shaped by both rupture and continuity — from his early photo-based paintings to his final abstractions."

Gallery 1: 1962–1970 — Painting from Photographs: Photography as a Source of Imagery

"From the outset, Richter’s choice of subjects was complex: on the one hand, seemingly mundane images taken from newspapers and magazines, such as the work that Richter regards as his ‘number 1’, in 1962, an image of a table taken from an Italian design magazine and partially obliterated, (Tisch); on the other, family portraits referring to his own past (Onkel Rudi, Tante Marianne), as well as to the shadows of German history (Bombers). Already in the mid-1960s, Richter was challenging the illusionist conventions of painting with his sculpture Four Panes of Glass and his first Color Charts. With the Cityscapes, he explored a pseudo-expressionist impasto style; with the Landscapes and Seascapes, he tested classic genres against the grain."

Gallery 2: 1971–1975 — Investigating representation.

"The 48 Portraits, painted for the 1972 Venice Biennale and a true tour de force, mark the beginning of a new chapter in which Richter interrogates the nature of painting in multiple ways: through the use of his signature blur technique (Vermalung); the progressive copying and dissolution of a Titian Annunciation; the random distribution of color in the large Color Charts; and the rejection of representation and expression in the Grey Paintings."

Gallery 4: 1976–1986 — Exploring abstraction.

"During this decade, Richter laid the foundations of his distinctive approach to abstraction: enlarging watercolor studies, examining the painted surface, and making the brushstroke itself the subject of a painting (Strich). At the same time, he painted the first portraits of his daughter Betty and continued exploring traditional subjects such as landscape and still life."

Gallery 5: 1987–1995 — “Sombre reflections.”

"Motivated by a profoundly skeptical view of artistic and social change, Richter painted the October 18, 1977 series — exceptionally on loan from MoMA — his only body of work that explicitly refers to recent German history. During this period, he also produced some of his most striking and somber abstract works. Returning to the theme of his early family paintings, Richter created the Sabine mit Kind series."

Galleries 7 and 9: 1996–2009 — New perspectives in painting: chance.

"In the late 1990s, Richter entered a highly productive period, spanning small figurative and abstract works, the austere Silikat series, experiments with chance that culminated in 4900 Colors, and the meditative Cage Paintings, a tribute to composer John Cage."

Galleries 9 and 10: 2009-2017 — Final paintings.

"Richter surprised audiences by abandoning painting for several years to experiment with glass works and digitally generated Strip images. He returned to painting with Birkenau, a group of works inspired by four photographs taken inside a Nazi extermination camp. The final room of paintings presents his last masterful abstract canvases completed in 2017, after which Richter’s attention has focused on the drawings shown in Gallery 11."

"Sculpture appears at key points throughout the exhibition, and three rooms dedicated to watercolors, drawings and overpainted photographs provide an interlude and change of pace in the 1970s and 1990s, while illustrating the artist’s ongoing concerns since he stopped painting in 2017."

In the cinema, we respect the dignity of our neighbour and the artist. In an art museum that is no longer the case.

Backwood Madness

 

Ari Savonen: Backwood Madness (FI 2025). Tomi Kandelin as the Stranger.

FI © 2025 Ari Savonen & SF Media. PC: SF Media Oy. P: Kimmo Perkkiö, Ari Savonen.

    D: Ari Savonen. SC: Aleksanteri Jaakkola, Ari Savonen, Janne-Markus Katila, Jari Manninen. DP: Esa Jussila, Mikko Löppönen – colour – release format: 25 fps, 2K DCP Scope 2.39:1, 5.1 Mix.

    Ari Savonen (art direction, set design and locations). * Janne Andberg, Harri Rautiainen (costume design & costumes). * Ari Savonen (costume design & costumes & miniature and artificial head FX & creature design). * Janne Andberg. Aleksanteri Jaakkola (miniature and artificial head FX & alternative creature design). * Full moon footage: Tero Saikkonen. Mask maker: Mika Niiranen. Key makeup & SFX makeup artists: Soile Karhu, Isa Koskelainen, Laura Laukkanen, Anniina Saari. Cost: Soile Karhu, Saija Koskelainen, Iivari Pääkkönen. Costumes & tractor and old machines & electric aggregates: K. A. Savonen, Tarja Tarvainen. Chainmails and knives & gun expert & Suomi-konepistooli expert (Palsanpuron Paja): Iivari Pääkkönen. Gun experts: K. A. Savonen, Markus Tilli, Jussi Halttunen. Post production supervisor & visual effects and green screen & trailer editor: Matti Kuusniemi. 

    M: Jussi Huhtala. Song: "Pimeä on oksan taitto" by Jonne Järvelä. S: Kimmo Perkkiö. ED: Ari Savonen, Toni Luoma-Nirva. 

    CAST:

Toni Kandelin  … The Stranger

Aleksanteri Jaakkola  … Väinö  

Jari Manninen  … Father Aatami

Roope Olenius  … Tapio  

Pekka Lehtosaari  … Peikkokuningas / Troll King Oksa (voice) (Sami Huhtala (motion capture)

Jarmo Koski  …  Father Juhani

Jukka Hautajärvi  … Rahko  

Niina Ylipahkala  … Eeva  

Aslak Karsten  … Shaman

Ari Karhunen  … Witch doctor

Jarmo Pukkila  … Kyyrölä

Enni Ojutkangas  … Lotta [female paramilitary]

Jonne Järvelä  … the human side of the Stranger in dreams

Håvard Ellefsen  … the troll side of the Stranger in dreams

Joni Karhila  …  Hiisi / Goblin

    Loc: Saarijärvi, Kouvola, Orimattila, Tampere, Nokia, Porvoo, Äänekoski, Laukaa, Espoo, Seinäjoki, Turku. Forest: Saarijärvi, aerial: Haikankärki ridge (Summassaari island in Lake Summanen). Other Saarijärvi sites: Kivikauden kylä (stone age village), Rahkola village, trenches (Lumpero), Julmat Lammit.

    Language: Finnish.

    95 min

    Genre: fantasy, horror.

    Distributor: Bright Fame Pictures. International sales: Fizz-e-Motion.

    Finnish premiere: 22 Aug 2025.

    2026 Jussi Awards Nominee: Best Makeup.

    Vimeo link for Jussi Awards viewed at home in Paris, 17 Feb 2026

OFFICIAL:

 

"Backwood Madness (2025) on Ari Savosen ohjaama ja käsikirjoittama kauhufantasia, jossa seikkaillaan peikkojen maailmassa. Metsänväen rauha järkkyy ihmisen aiheuttamien sotien vuoksi, josta alkaa kostonkierre ihmisten ja metsän olentojen välillä. Taistelun voi kuitenkin lopettaa vain yksi hahmo, Muukalainen (Toni Kandelin). Elokuva oli tuotannossa yli 10 vuotta ja se on saanut huomiota kunnianhimoisesta tehostemaskeerauksesta."

"Ihmisten sodilla on musertavat vaikutukset metsään ja sen olentoihin. Metsä vastaa niin kuin sinne huudetaan, ja olennot tahtovat koston. Metsän tasapaino on järkkynyt, ja on vain yksi, joka voi tuoda sen takaisin."

"Suomen suurin tehostemaskeerauselokuva on sotaseikkailu hiisien, peikkojen ja shamaanien maailmaan, jollaista ei ole ennen nähty. Fantasiaa ja kauhua yhdistelevä elokuva on ohjaaja-käsikirjoittaja-tuottaja Ari Savosen esikoiselokuva ohjaajana. Savonen on myös suurelta osin suunnitellut ja toteuttanut elokuvan tehostemaskeerauksia ja tehosteita."

"The war of men harms the beings of the forest. The beings demand revenge and the balance between men and the forest is broken. There might be one who can bring back that balance."

"The biggest special makeup effects film coming out of Finland is an unforeseen war adventure in the world of goblins, trolls and shamans. The fantasy-horror film is director-screenwriter-producer Ari Savonen’s directorial debut. Savonen has also designed and crafted many of the special makeup effects and other practical effects seen in the film."

AA: Ari Savonen's Backwood Madness is a spectacular creature feature unlike anything made in Finland before.

A forest horror extravaganza. "Niin metsä vastaa niin kuin sinne huudetaan" is an untranslatable Finnish proverb, literally "the forest echoes back what you shout", but meaning "you reap what you sow".

An unapologetic gore and splatter film. During World War II, a soldier kills a forest troll, and an endless cycle of retaliation begins, inviting cavemen, trolls, goblins and witches to participate. The action is full of slaughters and other atrocities. Hearts and intestines are ripped out. "Blood streams like champagne" like Dostoevsky wrote in Notes from the Underground. Bodies pile up, corpses rot. A rape and a devil baby are among the sights.

Backwood Madness belongs to the cinema of attractions, slight on narrative, structure, development, character, psychology, emotion, tension and suspense.

Strong on shock, atmosphere, mood, landscape, aerial cinematography, sound and music. 

It is visionary cinema.

The creature design is unique and well integrated into a fascinating and coherent visual concept, including clothes, weapons, buildings and equipment. The goblins, trolls and shamans appear as outgrowths of the forest, a magical, animistic and sacred milieu for Finns. Usually benign, until it isn't. 

Because of the creature design warmly recommended for international aficionados of the cinefantastique.

...

CAST CREDENTIALS FROM THE PRESS DOSSIER

    ACTORS

Toni Kandelin (Goremageddon 2), Aleksanteri Jaakkola (Bunny the Killer Thing), Jari Manninen (Punainen Kohina), Roope Olenius (Free Skate), Sami Huhtala (Rendel), Pekka Lehtosaari (Röllin sydän), Jarmo Koski (Salatut elämät), Jukka Hautajärvi (Skeleton Crew), Ari Karhunen (Gravediggers), Niina Ylipahkala (Kyrsyä – Tuftland), Jarmo Pukkila ((Pri)sons), Kristian Aho (Nightsatan and the Loops of Doom), Jonne Järvelä (Korpiklaani -yhtye) and Mortiis aka Håvard Ellefsen (Mortiis -yhtye).

    INTRODUCING

Nooa Eronen, Aslak Karsten and Harri Rautiainen.

    CAMEOS

Veera W. Vilo (Free Skate), Petri Hiltunen (Väinämöisen paluu -comics), CHRZU (Carlotta Moore and Me), Sampo Marjomaa (Hauskat kotivideot), Anette Aghazarian (Uusi päivä), Enni Ojutkangas (Lapua 1976), Antti L. J. Pääkkönen (Paavo Pesusieni -ääni), Jere Saarela ((Pri)sons), Rauli Ylitalo (Salatut elämät), Ville Lähde (Video Cop) and Rami Rusinen (Armomurhaaja).

CAST IN EXTENSO IN ELONET

Toni Kandelin Muukalainen

Jari Manninen Aatami

Aleksanteri Jaakkola Väinö

Roope Olenius Tapio

Nooa Eronen Muukalainen (lapsi)

Niko Takalahti Muukalainen (teini)

Kerttu Koskelainen Muukalainen (vauva)

Panu Poutanen Muukalainen (uusi Rahko)

Jonne Järvelä Muukalainen (puoliksi ihminen)

Mortiis Muukalainen (puoliksi peikko)

Antti L. J. Pääkkönen puolikas peikko (ääni)

Sami Huhtala Oksa

Pekka Lehtosaari Oksa (ääni)

Jarmo Koski Juhani

Jukka Hautajärvi Rahko

Ari Karhunen Torko / Vesihiisi

Jarmo Ikola Kyyrölä

Aslak Karsten shamaani

Ari Savonen shamaani & poppamies (ääni)

Harri Rautiainen poppamies

Niina Ylipahkala Eeva

Eeva Putro Aino

Kristian Aho peikkokuningas

Jussi Tuomi peikkojen johtaja

Ari Nieminen isäntä

Veera W. Vilo emäntä

Marika Kim Aatamin tyttöystävä

Marsa Niskanen peikkotyttö / Näkki

Markus Tilli Jussi

Karo von Rutenhjelm Sulevi

Marko Pesonen Antti

Janne Koskelainen mies rannalla

Anne Tarvus nainen rannalla

Mikko Milan Mikko

Teemu Kauppi esihistoriallinen luolamies

Johanna Borman esihistoriallinen hiisi

Olli Saarenpää hevosella ratsastava peikko

Esa Kemppainen sotilas

Anette Aghazarian Lotta

Emma-Lotta Kiuru Lotta

Enni Ojutkangas Lotta

Sara Tarnanen Lotta

Lloyd Kaufman erikoisvieras (ääni)

Muut esiintyjät: peikot, hiidet ja kyläläiset.

À pied d'œuvre / At Work

Valérie Donzelli: À pied d'œuvre / At Work (FR 2026). Bastien Bouillon as the writer-handyman-father Paul Marquet.

FR 2026 © 2025 Pitchipoï Productions, France 2 Cinéma. Production : Alain Goldman.

    Fiche technique

Réalisation : Valérie Donzelli

Scénario : Valérie Donzelli et Gilles Marchand, d'après le roman éponyme (2023) de Franck Courtès

Photographie : Irina Lubtchansky – format : couleur – 1,66:1

Décors : Manu de Chauvigny

Costumes : Nathalie Raoul

Musique : Jean-Michel Bernard

Son : Emmanuel Croset, Simon Poupard et André Rigaut

Montage : Pauline Gaillard

    Distribution

Bastien Bouillon : Paul Marquet

Virginie Ledoyen : Alice, éditrice chez Gallimard

André Marcon : le père de Paul

Valérie Donzelli : l'ex-épouse de Paul

Marie Rivière : Christine

Adrien Barazzone : Pierre Lautrec

Marion Lécrivain : la sœur de Paul

Oscar Tillette : le fils de Paul

Ève Oron : la fille de Paul

Philippe Katerine : le bijoutier

Claude Perron : la femme à la valise

Béatrice de Staël : la marchande de presse

Pauline Serieys : la jeune femme de la mezzanine

Michel Gondry : le client aux chaussettes

Éric Reinhardt : le client maniaque

Christopher Thompson : l'homme aux buis

    Soundtrack: 

– Franz Schubert: Trio in Es-Dur für Klavier, Violine und Violoncello nr. 2, D 929 (op. 100) (1827), perf. Trio Thaleia (Thomas Haug, Thomas Bruder, Wolfgang Hess)

– "Joe le taxi", de Vanessa Paradis

– "Le vieux couple", de Serge Reggiani

– "Foule sentimentale", de Alain Souchon 

    Dedication : À mon père / To My Father

    Loc : Paris, Montmorency

    Langue originale : français

    Durée : 92 minutes

    Genre : biographie, drame

    Sociétés de distribution : Diaphana (France) ; Agora Films (Suisse romande), Lumière (Belgique)

    Dates de sortie :

Italie : 29 août 2025 (Mostra de Venise) – Winner: Golden Osella: Best Screenplay – Winner: Premio Fondazione Fai Persona Lavoro Ambiente Award – Special Mention: Treatment of Issues Related to Work 

Belgique, France, Suisse romande : 4 février 2026

    Vu samedi, le 7 février 2026, Majestic Bastille, 4 bd Richard-Lenoir, 75011 Paris, M° Bastille, Lignes 1, 5, 8

Venice Film Festival 2025: Synopsis

" “Finishing a text doesn’t mean being published, being published doesn’t mean being read, being read doesn’t mean being loved, being loved doesn’t mean being successful, and success offers no promise of fortune.”

"À pied d’œuvre tells the true story of a successful photographer who gives up everything to devote himself to writing — and discovers poverty. This radical account, blending clarity and self-deprecation, portrays the journey of a man willing to pay the ultimate price for his freedom. "

Director’s Statement

" À pied d’œuvre is the portrait of a man who leaves behind a comfortable life to devote himself to writing, eventually slipping into precarity. This radical and deeply personal choice moved me profoundly. I wanted to stay true to the honesty of his journey, its simplicity and discipline. Together with Gilles Marchand, we wrote a character who is upright, gentle, and determined. Bastien Bouillon quickly emerged as the obvious choice, with his quiet strength and understated presence. This film questions the value we place on a life driven by a silent, unspectacular, yet unstoppable passion: the need to create, no matter what. " (Venice Film Festival 2025)

AA: Valérie Donzelli's À pied d'œuvre / At Work is a vision of contemporary life based on the acclaimed eponymous autobiographical novel by Franck Courtès. 

The protagonist Paul Marquet (Bastien Bouillon) is a decent and talented man fighting for survival in a twin trap. He is a top photographer who has switched to writing because that is his calling. He is a great writer, but you cannot earn a living as a writer anymore. Which is why he enters the gig economy.

Paul writes in the morning, and the rest of the day he is a handyman (un homme à tout faire, un factotum, un Michel Morin, un bricoleur, a jack of all trades) in the world of the precariat and petits boulots (odd jobs). 

Paul is a construction worker who helps demolish buildings. He is a gardener. He is a plumber. He is a carpenter. Helping take apart a steel ladder from a bunk bed he is injured and prescribed a month of sick leave which he cannot afford. He is a taxi driver whom his friends and relatives are embarrassed and shocked to meet like this. He is a window washer. He changes balcony plantings. When he hits a roe deer (chevreuil) with his car, he empathizes with its suffering and butchers it for dinner.

Like Ken Loach's Sorry We Missed You and Boris Lojkine's Souleymane's Story, À pied d'œuvre is a fascinating and essential study about self-employment. We witness the functioning of the Jobbing website where the job seeker can enter his offer. The lower the bid, the better the chance, and you see your status improve on a sliding scale the less you ask. On the other side, there is an online review feature in real time. Your performance gets instantly scored for all to see.

As a writer, Paul keeps being rejected by his editor (Virginie Ledoyen) at Gallimard because his stuff is too autobiographical. In a desperate turn, the hard drive of Paul's computer gets irrevocably broken, and he needs to start again from hand-written notebooks. The book (on which the movie is based) is finally published and favourably received, but the financial reward is far from enough to make a living.

Thus despite the success, Paul keeps multi-tasking in his triple life – besides a writer and a handyman he is also a devoted father of three children, although he has been evicted from home by his ex-wife (played by the director herself). Mostly Paul is a remote father, in touch with his offspring via teleconferences, but still in warm terms. His own father condemns him for being a clochard, which he is not, but he allows Paul to live in his unheated cellar, a former maid's room.

À pied d'œuvre resembles Anton Chekhov's My Life (Моя жизнь, 1896) in important ways, especially the inside view in social downfall. The important difference is Paul's triple life. Chekhov's Misail (yes! the name his father gave instead of Mikhail) has only a single life, of which he is proud, while all others find it a disgrace.

Because of the cellar symbolism of the social descent I was reminded of Bong Joon-Ho's Parasite (2019) and F. M. Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground (Записки изъ подполья, 1864), for Edwin Frank in Stranger Than Fiction the point of origin to what he calls the "Twenthieth-Century Novel". Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver is another point of affinity, also via Dostoevsky and Bresson. But in À pied d'œuvre the downfall is only external, and it is not a study in alienation. While losing his social status and the superficial paraphernalia of what Pierre Bourdieu called la distinction, Paul actually comes closer to life and his inner self. His is a journey of discovery in the world of today and himself.

Valérie Donzelli's movie is not a Bressonian study of spiritual illumination and transcendence in asceticism, although there are common qualities of dignity, self-sacrifice and inner growth. 

Donzelli displays a warm and engrossing commitment to her unusual tale. The cast is great, and her regular actor Bastien Bouillon excels in the leading role with silent indomitability. There is something Keatonian in his unsmiling yet appealing habitus.

The cinematography by Irina Lubtchansky impresses with precise observation, sharp mise-en-scène and a subtly warm colour palette. I like the attention paid to fine soft detail in beautiful close-ups. À pied d'œuvre is an adventure in the world of today, and the documentary appetite of Donzelli and Lubtchansky never fails to excite.

For Franck Courtès and Valérie Donzelli, À pied d'œuvre is about Paul's internal and individual challenge, his existential freedom of choice. The epic backstory in current social history goes unmentioned. Since the breakthrough of the internet 30 years ago, the cultural sector and the media have suffered a devastating blow. Photographers lost their income when everybody became a photographer with their smartphones. The supremacy of the internet destroyed most of the media, including literature, as people perceive that everything is free online. The internet behemoths of Silicon Valley are winners who take all. Creative artists and professionals get crumbs. Although not intended so by he author of the book nor the director of the film, for me À pied d'œuvre is also a saga of the creative professional in the age of the internet.

The audience was impressed. We were nodding at each other in astonishment of how good the film was. À pied d'œuvre is a film I look forward to revisiting, and I would find more films like this welcome.

Today I saw three films with a Paris premiere this week: A Light That Never Goes Out, The Mastermind and À pied d'œuvre. All with a male protagonist who has lost his hold on life. All in the cultural sector: a musician, an architect and a writer. All from different countries: Finland, the United States and France. All different: one coming to terms with depression, one with his lack of talent, and one facing the fact that the world we knew does not exist anymore.

The Mastermind

Kelly Reichardt: The Mastermind (US 2025). Josh O'Connor (James Blaine Mooney)

    US © 2025 Mastermind Movie Inc. Sociétés de production : FilmScience, MUBI et UTA Independent Film Group. Production : Neil Kopp, Vincent Savino, Anish Savjani et Sam Tischler.

Réalisation et scénario : Kelly Reichardt

Photographie : Christopher Blauvelt - 16 mm - colour - 1.66:1

Direction artistique : N/A

Décors : Anthony Gasparro

Costumes : Amy Roth

Musique : Rob Mazurek

Montage : Kelly Reichardt

    Distribution

Josh O'Connor : James Blaine Mooney

Alana Haim : Terri Mooney

John Magaro : Fred

Hope Davis : Sarah Mooney

Bill Camp : Bill Mooney

Gaby Hoffmann : Maude

Eli Gelb

Cole Doman

Javion Allen

Matthew Maher

Rehnzy Feliz

    Paintings: Arthur Dove (1880-1946).

    Loc: Cincinnati, Hamilton, Middletown (Ohio) - Columbus, Cleo Rogers Memorial Library (Columbus, Indiana).

    Durée : 110 minutes

    Genre : drame, casse

    Sociétés de distribution : MUBI (Monde) ; Condor Distribution (France)

    Dates de sortie :

France : 23 mai 2025 (Festival de Cannes 2025) ; 4 février 2026 (sortie nationale)

US : 29 Aug 2025 (Telluride Film Festival) ; 17 Oct 2025 (sortie nationale)

    Vu samedi, le 7 février 2026, MK2 Bastille (Côté Fg Saint-Antoine), 5 faubourg Saint-Antoine, Paris 11e

Official storyline: "In a sedate corner of Massachusetts circa 1970, JB Mooney (Josh O’Connor) an unemployed carpenter turned amateur art thief, plans his first big heist. When things go haywire, his life unravels."

Mara Fortes (Telluride Film Festival 2025): "The self-absorbed J. B. Mooney (Josh O’Connor) is an occasional carpenter and former art student in a sleepy Massachusetts town; his wife (Alana Haim) is the family’s dependable parent and breadwinner. In a stroke of hubris, he decides to recruit a pair of unreliable partners to rob the local museum. But he doesn’t plan for after the heist—and it’s the aftermath of the bungled scheme that’s the focus of Reichardt’s quietly subversive, often incisively funny and masterfully observed film. O’Connor is stellar as the inscrutable Mooney, cinema’s most unhurried man-on-the-lam. As he drifts unsteadily west, the country is shaking on its tilt: in the background, students galvanize in anti-war protests and the streets buzz with civil unrest. The tumult of the ‘70s permeates the airwaves and seeps through Reichardt’s careful compositions, and Rob Mazurek’s percussive jazzy score perfectly modulates the film’s darkly comic beats and richly textured moods." –Mara Fortes (U.S., 2025, 110m) In person: Kelly Reichardt, Josh O’Connor

Cannes Film Festival, Official Selection website: Manon Durand: A look back at the Cannes premiere on 4.2.2026: "For her second film presented in Competition, American director Kelly Reichardt directs Josh O’Connor for the first time in The Mastermind. In this heist film, the director of First Cow leaves her beloved Oregon behind to film in 1970s Massachusetts. A new unexpected theme that is once again a testament to the author’s eclectic range."

"Josh O’Connor plays J. B. Mooney, an unemployed carpenter who reinvents himself as an amateur art thief. Set against the turbulent backdrop of 1970s America, in the midst of the Vietnam War and the women’s liberation movement, the young man plans his first big heist yet. When things go haywire, his life unravels."

"Alongside the British actor — who also made an appearance on the Croisette this year for his role in the queer romance The History of Sound by Oliver Hermanus — we have the pleasure of seeing the lovely Alana Haim, who made her debut in Licorice Pizza by Paul Thomas Anderson four years ago, and whom we haven’t seen since. Both actors are featured for the first time under the direction of Kelly Reichardt, like the actress Hope Davis, who also walked the Red Carpet this year for Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme."

"This heist drama has enough to pique the curiosity of Kelly Reichardt fans as it basically is a true departure from her usual minimalist and bucolic style. Already selected for Un Certain Regard in 2008 for the moving Wendy and Lucy, and in Competition in 2022 with Showing Up, — both showcasing the iconic Michelle Williams — Kelly Reichardt was also a member of the 2019 Feature Films Jury. Her filmmaking explores the American experience from a gentle and poetic perspective and often takes a particular interest in working-class characters living in small-town communities — reminiscent of Sean Baker’s sensibility." (Cannes Film Festival, Official Selection, a look back by Manon Durand)

AA: The title of Kelly Reichardt's The Mastermind is ironic. The legacy of the heist film, including John Huston, Jules Dassin, Stanley Kubrick, Jean-Pierre Melville and Michael Mann, is implicit, only to be ignored by Reichardt, who does not even turn to parody such as Mario Monicelli's I soliti ignoti / Big Deal on Madonna Street, or comedy, such as the caper films of Laurel and Hardy.

Instead of building suspense or comedy, Reichard defuses both. The approach is anti-dramatic in the extreme in this evocation of small town America in 1970. The epochal social turmoil of the age appears as background noise until the finale in which J. M. Mooney tries to hide in an anti-Vietnam War demonstration, only to be caught there by the police. There is a connection with Charles Chaplin in Modern Times.

Josh O'Connor as Mooney creates a portrait of a sleepwalker in his time and age, in his family and his own life. It is a study of a lack of awareness and self-awareness. In a time of drop-outs and counterculture, Mooney cannot even be registered as belonging to them. As the brains of the art heist, he fails unspectacularly at every stage, and Reichardt refuses dramatic punches in them. 

As narrative cinema, The Mastermind is unusual. As visual art, as well. Shot on 16 mm film, there is a watercolour quality in Christopher Blauvelt's autumnal colour palette, with an emphasis on gray and brown and soft, blurred hues.

Rob Mazurek, a master of experimental jazz of the Chicago Underground, debuts as a film composer.  His relaxed sound world, with Latin American touches, is yet another countermeasure to thriller expectations. Silences count as much as sounds, the music connects with interiority while the imagery shows the material world.

Josh the loser and failed architect tries to shape up for the sake of his family – his own and the paternal one – but humiliations only get worse. The desperate attempt to reverse the situation by committing a crime reminds me of Roofman, but unlike it, The Mastermind does not strive to be an audience-pleasing genre film.

The portrait of the art museum is realistic. Arthur Dove (1880-1946), the first American abstract painter, was no longer a hot ticket in the early 1970s. While the art museum is fictional, the story is based on a real robbery. Kelly Reichardt had long been fascinated with art thefts and surprised to discover how relatively easy at the time it was to steal art, even by Gauguin, Picasso and Rembrandt. Against this background, Josh's failure seems even more devastating.

Jossain on valo joka ei sammu / A Light That Never Goes Out

Lauri-Matti Parppei: Jossain on valo joka ei sammu / A Light That Never Goes Out (FI 2025). Samuel Kujala (Pauli), Kaisa-Leena Koskenkorva (Anni). The primal scream against the Bothnian Bay.

La Lumière ne meurt jamais / Uma Luz que Nunca se Apaga / Ένα φως που δεν σβήνει.

    FI © 2025 Elokuvatuotantoyhtio Made. P: Ilona Tolmunen. Co-PC: Goodtime Pictures (Norway), Mediefondet Zefyr (Norway). Co-P: Vincent Saunders, Ngål Lambrechts.

    D+SC+M: Lauri-Matti Parppei. Dramaturges: Anna Brotkin, Ulla Heikkilä, Jan Forsström, Sissel Dalsgaard Thomsen. DP: Mikko Parttimaa – colour – 16:9. Lighting: Henri Jaaksola. AD: Nanna Hirvonen. Cost: Mimosa Kuusimäki. Makeup: Natalie Costello. SFX: Suomen Pyrotekniikka Oy. VFX: Jon-André Hakvåg, Theodor Flo-Groeneboom, Samuel Karlsson, Ulrikke Skjold. M: all music was played live. See soundtrack listing below. S: Yngve Leidulv Sætre, Juuso Oksala. ED: Frida Eggum Michaelsen. Casting: Minna Sorvoja.

    CAST

Samuel Kujala / Pauli

Anna Rosaliina Kauno / Iiris

Camille Auer / Sini

Kaisa-Leena Koskenkorva / Anni

Mari Rantasila / äiti

Jarkko Pajunen / isä

Jari "Onde" Pelamo / Onde

Aapo Kivenmaa / vihainen Lukko-fani

Marios Kleovoulou / iloinen Lukko-fani

Suvi Korpela / juhlavieras

Totti Kaarle / kitaransoittaja

Jussi Puukka / Anton

Toni "Protoni" Järvinen / Protoni

Katja Lukkarinen / Julia

Merimaija Aalto / viulisti

Aino Juutilainen / sellisti

Ilona Tolmunen / konserttijärjestäjä

Ville Kulju / vahtimestari

Katarine Lehtomäki / täti

Anita Osola / täti

Eija Nurmio / täti

Päivi Kasala / täti

Kalevi Kasala / setä

Markus Nikkanen / setä

Petteri Hovi / setä

Matti Mustonen / kapellimestari

Matvei German / soittaja

    Other performers:

Heemus (dog)

    110 min (Elonet), 108 min (L'Officiel des Spectacles)

    Genre : Drame

    Langue de tournage : Finnois (dialecte de Rauma = Rauman giäl)

    Loc: Rauma: Kalatori, Hauenguano, Valtakadun tasoristeys, Saharanta, Petäjäksentie, Otalahden uimaranta, Urheilukatu, Uudenlahdentie, Eteläpitkäkatu, Syväraumankatu, Rauman terveyskeskus, Rauman Taidemuseo, Ravintola Otava, Pihlajamaan Musiikki.

    Loc: Uusimaa: Villa Salmela, Musiikkitalo, Sipoon Seurakunta, Loviisan Kotisatama, Cygnaeuksenkatu, Niinisaarentie, Raappavuorenrinne, Untamontie.

    Rauman Taidemuseo artworks: Jarmo Mäkilä: Kukkoilijat (2023), Valtakunta (2023), Kärpästen herra (2010). Laura Jalava, Johanna Naukkarinen: Kävelet neljällä jalalla, minä kahdella.

    Festival premiere: 15 May 2025 ACID Cannes.

    Helsinki premiere: 12 Sep 2025 – distributor: B-Plan Distribution Oy.

    Date de sortie en France : 4 février 2026 – distributeur : Les Alchimistes Films – sous-titres français : Emil Sana.

    Vu samedi, le 7 février 2026, Cinéma Saint-André-des-Arts, Salle 1, 30 rue Saint-André-des-Arts, 75006 Paris, M° Saint-Michel, ligne 4.

L'Officiel des Spectacles: "Pauli, célèbre flûtiste classique, retourne dans sa petite ville natale pour se remettre d'une dépression. Il renoue avec une ancienne camarade de classe, qui lui propose de rejoindre un groupe de musique joyeusement anticonformiste. Pauli, de nature plutôt perfectionniste, se laisse embarquer dans cette aventure musicale aussi inattendue qu'expérimentale."

"La lumière ne meurt jamais est le premier long-métrage de Lauri-Matti Parppei, artiste au parcours éclectique qui s'inspire largement de sa propre enfance à Rauma, ville dans le sud de la Finlande où se déroule le film. Invitation au dépassement de soi, il s'agit aussi d'un récit initiatique au sens littéraire du terme. Le réalisateur explique : « En grandissant au sein de la scène musicale underground, j'ai été confronté à des problèmes de santé mentale importants. Certains d'entre nous ne sont plus là aujourd'hui, mais pour la plupart nous sommes parvenus à nous sauver les uns les autres. Il y a toujours de l'espoir et c'est ce que j'essaye de transmettre dans le film. »"

AA: An exceptional sonority runs through Lauri-Matti Parppei's debut feature film A Light That Never Goes Out. It is the story of the burnout of a star artist, the flute maestro Pauli (Samuel Kujala) who has lost his mojo in life and art.

About depression, it is not depressive. The movie is driven by a serene intensity. It is also characterized by a purity of observation, a fine composition, and an assured mise-en-scène.

For 20 years Pauli has been a professional in the world of classical music. Now he retreats to his childhood home in Rauma. His mother (Mari Rantasila) and father (Jarkko Pajunen) are seriously concerned, and Pauli does not make life easy for them.

On the streets of Rauma, Pauli stumbles upon old acquaintances, who invite him to experiences of concrete sound, breaking free of conventions. Even concepts such as "orchestra", "concert", "tonality" and "instruments" are abandoned, perhaps even "music". But it is about sound, performance, and even recording (preferably analogue in vinyl).

The performances are all live by the team called ______________ , consisting of  Iiris (Anna Rosaliisa Kauno), Pauli, Sini (Camille Auer) and Anni (Kaisaleena Koskenkorva). They call their creations "assaults of sound colours", not music but "attacks against the audience". Their sources of inspiration range from electric toothbrushes to primal screams towards the sea. They get in touch with galactic energy. Going back to square one, the black square even. The eternal return of dada.

Visiting the Helsinki Music Center, Pauli meets fellow musicians. They struggle to understand what Pauli is doing and talk down about self-produced amateur stuff, but Pauli defends his Rauma team in a way which reminds me of John T. Chance (John Wayne) in Rio Bravo. Pat Wheeler: "A game-legged old man and a drunk. That's all you got?" John T. Chance: "That's what I got."

This sequence connects to a topic reverberating in contemporary cinema: academic people out of touch with reality, condescending to people who don't share their surface status. In recent weeks, this has struck me in Kenraaliharjoitus and À pied d'œuvre. It was also a subtext in my favourite film of last year: Highway 99: A Double Album. A major background in the rise of populism, including in Finland and the U.S. When parties previously championing the working people abandoned them, the field was left free for populists.

Pauli's journey of self-discovery continues. Until now it has been a self-evident career. Germans have an apt word: Laufbahn, meaning literally a runtrack. Pauli has been a child prodigy driven to pursue his art on the highest level. But he has lost touch with himself. He does not have friends, only colleagues and acquaintances. He has not even succeeded in killing himself.

Although he participates in the sound happening of his Rauma circle, he is ashamed of himself and insults his fellows deeply with his parting words. But he returns to apologize. To start again he must return to zero.

The sense of place is vibrant, and the Rauma dialect is appealing in a similar way as the Pori dialect was in Levoton Tuhkimo (2024) in which Samuel Kujala also participated as the keyboardist Pete. Rauma is a mere 50 km to the south from Pori, but the dialects are different. A main connection is Mari Rantasila who plays Pauli's mother and directed Levoton Tuhkimo. Dialogue like this is music.

The art milieu also includes a visit to Rauman taidemuseo (Rauma Museum of Art) where I am delighted to see paintings by Jarmo Mäkilä. Mäkilä has found a unique approach to realism: starting from authentic observations he transforms them in ways that are not magical, surrealistic nor symbolistic but something which words fail to convey. Something similar happens also in Parppei's cinema, something beyond plain observation, such as the luminous dog.

A world of transcendence is also introduced in the Orthodox world. The Orthodox Church of Finland is not prominent on the west coast of Finland where Rauma lies. But Parppei is an old Karelian family name, and the director's ancestors stem from Orthodox Eastern Karelia, now in Russia. An ancestor of Lauri-Matti's was the first person to be photographed with a kantele (a Karelian zither). A deeply moving moment is the communal singing of the traditional Orthodox birthday song "Monia vuosia (Many Years / Многая лета)" composed by Dmitri Bortniansky.

A Light That Never Goes Out is about rebirth in life and art.

...

SOUNDTRACK LISTING

1:10 000

säv./sov. Anna Rosaliina Kauno

san. Lauri-Matti Parppei

es. Anna Rosaliina Kauno

Tuntuu ettei tunnu miltään

säv./san. Lauri-Matti Parppei

sov. Lauri-Matti Parppei, Anna Rosaliina Kauno, Samuel Kujala, Camille Auer

es. ______________

Anna vanhojen unelmien kuolla II

säv. Lauri-Matti Parppei &

Orvokki Ottila

san./säv. Lauri-Matti Parppei

es. Kaisa-Leena Koskenkorva

Suomen majakat

säv./san. Lauri-Matti Parppei

sov. Lauri-Matti Parppei, Anna Rosaliina Kauno, Samuel Kujala, Camille Auer

es. ______________

Kiireellisiä viestejä ihmiskunnalta

säv. Lauri-Matti Parppei

sov. Lauri-Matti Parppei, Anna Rosaliina Kauno, Samuel Kujala, Camille Auer

es. ______________

Pauli hei

säv./san. Lauri-Matti Parppei

sov. Lauri-Matti Parppei, Kaisa Koskenkorva

es. Kaisa Koskenkorva

Lohduta mua

säv./san. Lauri-Matti Parppei

sov. Lauri-Matti Parppei, Anna Rosaliina Kauno, Samuel Kujala, Camille Auer

es. ______________

Monia vuosia / Many Years / Многая літа / Многая лета

säv. Dmitri Bortniansky / Дмитрий Бортнянский (1751–1825, Russian composer of Ukrainian Cossack origin)

san. tuntematon, sov. P. P. O.

es. Katarine Lehtomäki, Anita Osola, Eija Nurmio, Päivi Kasala, Kalevi Kasala, Markus Nikkanen, Petteri Hovi

Maurice Ravel: Sonate pour violon et violoncelle (1920) à la mémoire de Claude Debussy

M.73: III. Lent

säv. Maurice Ravel

es. Merimaija Aalto & Aino Juutilainen

Attachment Styles

säv. Lauri-Matti Parppei & Laura Jalava

san. Laura Jalava

es. Naamalau

The Body

säv. Lauri-Matti Parppei & Laura Jalava

san. Laura Jalava

es. Naamalau

...

L'ACID CANNES

15 MAY 2025

LA LUMIÈRE NE MEURT JAMAIS

Un film de Lauri-Matti Parppei

Finlande, Norvège – 2025 – 108 min

" Pauli, célèbre flûtiste classique, retourne dans sa petite ville natale pour se remettre d’une dépression. Il renoue avec une ancienne camarade de classe, qui lui propose de rejoindre un groupe de musique joyeusement anticonformiste. Comment Pauli, de nature plutôt perfectionniste, va t’il se laisser embarquer dans cette aventure musicale aussi inattendue qu’expérimentale ?

" Successful classical flutist Pauli (29) returns to his small hometown after a breakdown. Reconnecting with old schoolmate Iiris, he is drawn into experimental music. Pauli, who has always sought perfection, is drawn to her chaotic energy and finds comfort in their sonic experiments. "

À PROPOS DE LA LUMIÈRE NE MEURT JAMAIS

" Lauri-Matti Parppei, qui a enregistré plusieurs disques dans une vie parallèle, nous emmène dans sa ville natale, au sud de la Finlande, un endroit où l'on parle peu et surtout pas de dépression — le mal qui ronge Pauli, revenu chez ses parents le temps de panser ses blessures. Sous le signe de la mélancolie, le film, mis en scène de façon précise, sans chichis, tisse sa narration comme une partition musicale — Pauli rejette le succès, renaissant grâce à une chaotique bande de parias. "

" L'amitié, plus forte que tout, crée une musicalité, à l'unisson, elle scande ce retour à l'essentiel. Celles et ceux qui s'attendent à un film sombre seront surpris·es : La lumière ne meurt jamais est une comédie qui enchante par sa tonalité, son propos, son univers queer et ses dandys burlesques — mention spéciale aux deux acolytes de Pauli, aussi tordant·es qu'émouvant·es. "

" Ne sachant pas très bien quoi faire de son héritage, de sa bonne éducation, cette génération angoissée décide, au nom de la liberté, avec jubilation, de tout envoyer en l'air. Non, l'Art ne doit pas être muséifié, la beauté du geste et la ferveur du processus créatif importent plus que la reconnaissance : un premier film unique, qui ne met pas la musique en avant comme un résultat, mais comme un terrain d'expérimentation et une possibilité d'amitié. "

– Jan Gassmann, Benoît Sabatier et Pamela Varela, cinéastes de l'ACID

" Lauri-Matti Parppei, who has recorded several albums in a parallel life, takes us to their hometown in Northern Finland, a place where people speak little and depression is a taboo - this is Pauli's illness, as he returns home to heal his wounds. With a melancholic tone, the film, through its precise, no-frills directing style, weaves its story like a musical score. Pauli rejects success and returns to life thanks to a chaotic lineup of outcasts. "

" Friendship, stronger than anything, sets the tone, in unison, and rhythms Pauli's return to the basics. But if you're expecting a dark film, you might be surprised: A Light That Never Goes Out is a delightful comedy through its tone, its theme, its queer universe and its dandies- special mention to Pauli's two farcical buddies, both hilarious and moving. Not knowing what to do with its inheritance and its education, this anxious generation decides, in the name of freedom, to throw everything into the air with excitement. "

" No, Art should not be museumized; the craft and the enthusiasm of the creative process matter more than recognition. A Light That Never Goes Out is a singular first feature, which doesn't value music as an outcome but as a testing ground and a possibility of friendship. "

Jan Gassmann – Cinéaste

Benoît Sabatier – Cinéaste

Pamela Varela – Cinéaste

Paroles de cinéastes

À propos de LA LUMIÈRE NE MEURT JAMAIS

" Préparez-vous au grand départ pour le sud de la Finlande ! Son dialecte particulier, sa lumière d'une clarté et d'une netteté merveilleuse, ses parents taiseux et religieux, et ses jeunes loin des normes : vous allez voyager. Et surtout en prendre plein les oreilles. Car La Lumière ne meurt jamais nous immerge aux côtés d'un groupe de musique expérimentale, ou plutôt, selon eux, d'un collectif d'art sonore. "

" En suivant la naissance de l'amitié entre Pauli, jeune flutiste prodige mais dépressif et Iris, flamboyante musicienne à qui rien ne fait peur, ce premier film va nous sortir de la noirceur. On y découvrira qu'être amis c'est parfois juste faire des sons bizarres ensemble, que des chiens lumineux peuvent faire de fidèles compagnons et on saura enfin quel genre de musique font les écrous quand on les mixe (oui, oui dans un mixeur !). "

 

" Fourmillant d'idées, le film propose une approche extrêmement ludique du travail de la musique concrète, toutes les compositions du film ayant d'ailleurs été enregistrées sur le plateau pendant le tournage. Profondément punk, profondément libre, une vraie découverte. "

Arlène Groffe – Programmatrice du Ciné 104 à Pantin

...

OFFICIAL IN FINNISH:

“ Kui moni raumalainen on tehny levyn, mikä jonai päivänä lähetetään avaruuteen? ”

"Romahduksen kokenut ammattihuilisti Pauli (Samuel Kujala) palaa lapsuudenkotiinsa Raumalle. Hän tapaa vanhan koulukaverinsa Iiriksen (Anna Rosaliina Kauno), joka sinnikkäästi taivuttelee Paulin mukaansa tekemään outoa musiikkia, jota kukaan ei tiennyt haluavansa kuulla. Aiemmin virheettömyyteen pyrkinyt Pauli alkaa löytää lohtua kummallisista äänistä ja omalaatuisesta ystävyydestä."

"Cannesin elokuvajuhlien ACID-sarjassa maailmanensi-iltansa saanut Jossain on valo joka ei sammu on Lauri-Matti Parppein anteeksipyytelemätön esikoisohjaus ja vilpitön rakkaudentunnustus kotikaupungilleen Raumalle."

OHJAAJAN SANA

"Jossain on valo joka ei sammu perustuu omiin kokemuksiini pienen kaupungin tee-se-itse-kulttuuripiireissä. Halusin tehdä elokuvan, joka on vimmainen, anteeksipyytelemätön ja toiveikas kuvaus oman äänen löytämisestä ja vaikeiden aikojen yli selviämisestä."

"Asuin nuoruuteni Raumalla ja teininä musiikilla, elokuvilla ja taiteella oli valtava merkitys. Olin yksinäinen ja koska muutakaan tekemistä ei ollut, aloin tehdä itsekseni musiikkia. Sen kautta tutustuin vähitellen ihmisiin, jotka olivat yhtä hukassa, mutta halusimme kaikki palavasti tehdä jotain omaa. Kun kukaan ei kiinnostunut musiikistamme, perustimme oman levy-yhtiön ja järjestimme itse keikkamme. Julkaisimme monta levyä, joita harva on kuullut ja vielä harvempi ostanut, ja yleensä keikoilla oli enemmän soittajia kuin yleisöä. Se ei haitannut: Emme osanneet haaveilla menestyksestä, sillä musiikin tekeminen itsessään antoi merkitystä olemassaololle ja keinon vaikuttaa ympäröivään todellisuuteemme. Ja meillä oli aina lähes yhtä hauskaa kuin elokuvan hahmoilla sitä tehdessä!"

"Musiikilla on tärkeä rooli myös elokuvassa. Elokuvassa ei ole lainkaan perinteistä taustamusiikkia, vaan näyttelijät esittivät kaiken musiikin elävänä kameran edessä. Halusin säveltää elokuvaan musiikkia, joka on samaan aikaan outoa ja lähestyttävää. Tärkeää oli, että erikoisten kokeilujen pitää näyttää hauskalta ja innostavalta. Elokuvan näyttelijöiden, myös musiikillisesti lahjakkaiden, Samuel Kujalan, Anna Rosaliina Kaunon, Camille Auerin ja Kaisa-Leena Koskenkorvan kanssa oli vaivatonta kuvata poikkeuksellisen aidon tuntuista ystävyyttä, joka rikkoo myös perinteisiä sukupuolirooleja ja -stereotypioita."

"Elokuva on kuvattu ja se sijoittuu pääosin Raumalle, noin 40 000 asukkaan pikkukaupunkiin, jolla on ainutlaatuinen huumori sekä vahva oma murre, tai tarkemmin sanottuna kieli, joka on yhä äidinkieleni. Pienellä paikkakunnalla tehty taide voi olla verrattoman merkityksellistä, sekä tekijöille itselleen, että koko yhteisölle heidän ympärillään. Lopputulosta tärkeämpää on tekemisen luoma yhteys ja ystävyys. Oman elämäni se pelasti, ja samoin se pelastaa myös Paulin, Iiriksen ja Sinin."

"Toivon, että Jossain on valo joka ei sammu on elokuva, jonka maailmassa kaikki saavat olla hetken sellaisia kuin ovat – ja toteuttaa itseään niin hulluilla tavoilla kuin vain osaavat ja uskaltavat. Elokuva, jonka äärellä voisi tuntea olevansa vähän vähemmän yksinäinen."