Laula minulle Arja / Sing for Me Arja (in person: Arja Saijonmaa and Marko Talli)

Marko Talli: Laula minulle Arja / Sing for Me Arja (FI 2026). Arja Saijonmaa.

Marko Talli: Laula minulle Arja / Sing for Me Arja (FI 2026). Mikis Theodorakis and Arja Saijonmaa.

Arja Saijonmaa: Laulu vapaudelle: muistelmani (Finnish translation by Sirpa Hietanen, WSOY 2025) / En sång för frihet (Swedish original, Ekerlids förlag, 2024) / [A Song for Freedom: My Memoirs]. "The song will carry us while the world is trembling. The scintillating autobiography of a firebrand artist. Arja Saijonmaa has sung with Mikhail Gorbachev, gone through adventures in the jungles of Central America, visited Yasser Arafat at his desert bunker and risen to an iconic singing star in Finland, Sweden and Norway. She has met with success but also suffered severe setbacks on her career and in her personal life." (From the WSOY publicity blurb).

Sjung för mig Arja.

    FI 2026. PC: Yellow Film & TV, Mantaray Film • P+D: Marko Talli • SC: Marko Talli, Nigge Bagge • DP: Jani Kumpulainen • ED: Nigge Bagge • S: Juha Hakanen • M: Matti Bye • Copy: Yellow Film & TV • DCP • in Finnish, Swedish, English, French, Greek • DCP with Finnish and Swedish subtitles * screening subtitled in English • 98 min

    Sodankylän Elokuvajuhlat / Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF) 2026, Sodankylä.

    In person: Arja Saijonmaa and Marko Talli, hosted by Liselott Forsman.

    Viewed at the Punainen Teltta, 12 June 2026.

AA: Sing for Me Arja is my favourite film of the year so far. Why? Because it is a movie about the power of the spirit. It is about the essence of culture in a moment when it is endangered by budget cuts, self-censorship and IT oligarchs. Thirty years ago the internet was a force of good but now it is turning into an instance of distraction. In an age when some pretend that the human mind can be outsourced, we need more culture than before.

Culture is our superpower, and it can change the world. The life of Arja Saijonmaa is evidence of this, from the volcanic debut in Lapualaisooppera ([The Lapua Opera], 1966) to this day. 

Marko Talli's candid documentary follows the rise of Saijonmaa to a global solidarity fighter for freedom and democracy in Greece and Chile and an international goodwill ambassador collaborating with luminaries from Pablo Neruda to Harry Belafonte.

Saijonmaa started in Finland but was not a prophet in her own land. In her native Mikkeli the local Lotta ladies selling muikku (vendace) delicacies deserted the market square when Saijonmaa arrived. Kaj Chydenius, the composer and conductor genius, discovered Arja: "tämä ääni ei mahdu tähän huoneeseen" ["this room is not big enough for her voice"]. In a disgraceful detour, Chydenius at a later point became a political hack applying mafia boss approaches to the one who did not toe his party line. Arja chose a sky bigger than his.

Saijonmaa had been passionate about Mikis Theodorakis since the 1960s, and when he was released from prison, Arja welcomed him in Helsinki in November 1970 by singing "These Trees" in Finnish at the Old Student House, and the deeply moved Mikis sang the same song back to her in Greek.

Such was the beginning of a lifelong friendship and professional collaboration. Ever since the question has been: was it also a love affair? Mikis referred to the two Greek words for love: eros and agape. Their affair was agape.

From Saijonmaa's private life we learn about her devotion to swimming and the sauna. We also learn that she was not able to have children because she had had to have her uterus removed. The world became her home.

The most poignant sequence is about an Israeli-Palestinian solidarity campaign in the context of the Oslo Accords. A children's camp of 150 Israeli and Palestinian children was arranged in Oslo, fifty-fifty of both, the children playing and singing together. Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat visited their concert and during the intermission signed an important successor agreement. As we know, Rabin was assassinated in 1992 by an Israeli extremist.

The film concludes with Arja's last encounter and her last reminiscences of Mikis. There was a time when Theodorakis wanted to visit her sauna in the countryside, and Arja asked him to wait by the lake at dusk, because from beyond a cape a black swan would appear, like the one that inspired Sibelius for The Swan of Tuonela [the land of death].

Watching Sing for Me Arja a day after the EPiC Elvis Presley in Concert sing-along event, I was reminiscing about the first time I saw Arja Saijonmaa. I was too young to visit the reportedly volcanic Lapualaisooppera in 1966. But I experienced a bolt of lightning in one of Saijonmaa's cabaret shows at the legendary Student Theatre in 1971. The cabaret started with Elvis Presley's "Jailhouse Rock" played back from a record. Elvis met his match in Arja with her voice capable of electrifying the biggest stages. I was thinking about the mythic battle in Kalevala of two Finnish shamans, Väinämöinen and Joukahainen, who try to sing each other to the swamp.

In this year's repertory of new Finnish releases, Sing for Me Arja seems to occupy a position similar to what The Helsinki Effect was last year. Both are great national films with an international resonance.

Topi E. Timonen (MSFF 2026): "Ohjaaja Marko Tallin uusin dokumenttielokuva avaa yleisölle ainutlaatuisen ikkunan sinivalkoisen kansallisaarteen Arja Saijonmaan (s. 1944) monivivahteiseen, yksinkertaistavia määritelmiä karttavaan taiteilijaelämään. Kuljemme Saijonmaan matkassa halki tämän synnyinmaan kohti kansainvälisiä estradeja ja todistamme taiteilijan, joka on yhtä lailla kotonaan tavallisen kansan kuin Ruotsin kuninkaallisten seurassa. Mikkelistä lähtöisin oleva maailmankansalainen on uransa mittaan tehnyt itsestään länsinaapurin kuuluisimman suomalaisen, ja elämä on kuljettanut häntä myös Pariisiin ja Kreikkaan."

"Dokumentin keskiössä on Saijonmaan vuosikymmeniä jatkunut, kupruilevan kiinnostava ystävyys ja ammatillinen yhteistyö kreikkalaisen Míkis Theodorákisin (1925–2021) kanssa. Saijonmaa on popularisoinut hänen laulujaan Suomessa ja maailmalla."

"Ohjaaja Talli – joka toimitti yleisölle aikaisemmin puhuttelevan henkilökuvan koomikko Jope Ruonansuusta – lähestyy Saijonmaan genrerajoja uhmannutta uraa kronologisen sijasta pikemminkin spiraalisesti. Kierroksien kertyessä kattavan arkistomateriaalin värittämä dokumentti kasvattaa ymmärrystämme Saijonmaasta kotimaansa kulttuurilähettiläänä. Samalla todistamme suomalaisen kulttuurituotannon kutkuttavia kehityskaaria 60-luvulta nykypäivään." Topi E. Timonen

Topi E. Timonen (MSFF 2026): "Director Marko Talli’s latest documentary offers the audience a unique window into the multifaceted life of Arja Saijonmaa (b. 1944), a Finnish national treasure whose artistic career defies simple definition. We follow Saijonmaa’s journey across her native land toward international stages, witnessing an artist who is equally at home among ordinary folk as she is in the company of Swedish royalty. A global citizen originally from Mikkeli, she has made a name for herself as the most famous Finn in Sweden over the course of her career, and life has also taken her to Paris and Greece."

"At the heart of the documentary is Saijonmaa’s decades-long, fascinatingly turbulent friendship and professional collaboration with the Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis (1925–2021). Saijonmaa has popularised his songs in Finland and around the world."

"Director Talli—who previously delivered a poignant portrait of comedian Jope Ruonansuu—approaches Saijonmaa’s genre-defying career in a spiral-like fashion rather than chronologically. As the story unfolds, the documentary, enriched by extensive archival material, deepens our understanding of Saijonmaa as a cultural ambassador for her home country. At the same time, we witness the intriguing evolution of Finnish cultural production from the 1960s to the present day." Topi E. Timonen

...

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