Documentaries
Writing with Fire
- International co-production: IN-FI
- Category
- Documentaries
- Directors
- Sushmit Ghosh, Rintu Thomas
- Screenwriters
- Sushmit Ghosh, Rintu Thomas
- Producers
- Sushmit Ghosh, Rintu Thomas, John Webster
- Release year
- 2021
- SES grant
- 20 000 €
- Budget
- 219 000 €
- Production companies
- JW Documentaries Oy
In one of the most socially oppressive and patriarchal states of India emerges a newspaper run entirely by rural women belonging to the Dalit or ‘untouchable’ community. Meera, its popular political reporter, decides to magnify the local paper’s impact with an audacious move – to transform from print to a digital news agency. Working in media dark villages, mocked and discouraged, this is the story of a visionary woman’s feisty spirit in building what will probably be the world’s first digital news agency run entirely by rural Dalit women.
The Other Side of Mars
- Category
- Documentaries
- Directors
- Minna Långström
- Screenwriters
- Minna Långström
- Producers
- Liisa Juntunen
- Release year
- 2019
- SES grant
- 50 000 €
- Budget
- 135 000 €
- Production companies
- napafilms oy
Dear Mother
- Category
- Documentaries
- Directors
- Paul-Anders Simma
- Screenwriters
- Paul-Anders Simma
- Producers
- Paul-Anders Simma, Margus Önapuu
- Release year
- 2020
- SES grant
- 75 000 €
- Budget
- 370 000 €
- Production companies
- Saamifilmi Oy
Dear Mother is about sixteen year old Tasha who lives at an orphanage in Kandalaksha, N.W Russia. One day an unknown woman calls her and claims that she is her mother. Tasha is shocked since the authorities had declared her mother dead by a drug overdose several years ago, but her body was never recovered.
The secret at the heart of this film is in Tasha’s forgotten hometown Lujaur. Different native tribes where relocated to this swamp on the middle of the tundra by the Soviet authorities. The objective was to create a utopian society where a new breed of socialistic humans would emerge. Instead many natives where abused in the name of progress. It’s a story about buried secrets and the search for identity, the universal need to understand why our families turn out the way they do.
Typhoon Mama
- Category
- Documentaries
- Directors
- Charlotta Lou Strömberg
- Screenwriters
- Charlotta Lou Strömberg
- Producers
- Marianne Mäkelä, Pertti Veijalainen
- Release year
- 2019
- SES grant
- 90 000 €
- Budget
- 226 000 €
- Production companies
- Illume Ltd. Oy
Director’s stepmother Yolanda, a Filipino woman married and living in Sweden, faces a balancing act for many immigrants: working a grueling job as a maid to keep up with having to pay unrealistic remittances to her three sons back home in the Philippines. When her grandson dies under suspicious circumstances, the family dynamics changes unexpectedly.
Future Remains
- Category
- Documentaries
- Directors
- Anna-Karin Grönroos
- Screenwriters
- Anna-Karin Grönroos
- Producers
- Oskar Forstén
- Release year
- 2021
- SES grant
- 80 000 €
- Budget
- 260 000 €
- Production companies
- Parad Media Oy
Future Remains is a documentary about the power of idealism through the story of Henrik Wahlforss, an industrial designer who believed design can change the future.
Anerca, Breath of Life
- Category
- Documentaries
- Directors
- Markku Lehmuskallio, Johannes Lehmuskallio
- Screenwriters
- Markku Lehmuskallio, Johannes Lehmuskallio
- Producers
- Markku Lehmuskallio
- Premiere
- 28.8.2020
- SES grant
- 44 000 €
- Budget
- 132 000 €
- Production companies
- Giron-filmi Oy
The film progresses though the power of music, dance, performance and depiction of everyday life. Gaining your daily subsistence, the ordinary life is the central source for music and other kinds of self-expression. It is life itself breathing. The cultures depicted in the film are the Chukchi, Alaskan and Canadian Inuit, the Sayisi Dene people of Canada, Greenlanders, Sámi, Nenets, Selkups and Nganasans.
School of Hope
- Category
- Documentaries
- Directors
- Mohamed El Aboudi
- Screenwriters
- Mohamed El Aboudi
- Producers
- Pertti Veijalainen, Jenny Timonen
- Release year
- 2021
- SES grant
- 150 000 €
- Budget
- 315 000 €
- Production companies
- Illume Ltd. Oy
- Distribution companies
- Yle
School of Hope tells about a nomad tribe struggling to get education for their children, and a young teacher trying to help them while suffering himself of the Government’s indifference toward rural regions.
Climate change and overgrazing have brought poverty to the old nomad tribes of the High Plateau of Atlas in Morocco and forced them to partial settlement. Now faced with the changing environment and the necessity to settle down, they feel more lost than when wandering with their cattle in the endless desert. They’d need wells, electricity, health care and schools, but the Government is not interested in their troubles.
When the Dehbi tribe couldn’t get a State school to their area, they decided to build it themselves, and through an association managed to get a teacher to come there. The small school can only offer the first elementary classes, after which the children should move to town to continue studying. Even if the family might be able to afford sending a child there, they don’t want to send the girls, worried of their safety. The situation is complex; the nomads know they need education but are also afraid of it, afraid of losing their children.
Gods of Molenbeek
- Category
- Documentaries
- Directors
- Reetta Huhtanen
- Screenwriters
- Reetta Huhtanen
- Producers
- Hannu-Pekka Vitikainen
- Premiere
- 9.8.2019
- SES grant
- 90 000 €
- Budget
- 200 000 €
- Production companies
- Zone2 Pictures Oy
- Distribution companies
- Pirkanmaan elokuvakeskus
“What is my God?” asks 6-years old boy, the protagonist of the film. He is hungry for knowledge of everything and abstract things have started to trouble his mind. In the film Gods of Molenbeek, the protagonist searches for outlook on life in a world which is in the middle of threat of terror. His best friends are a muslim boy and an atheist girl.
Ride of Passage
- Category
- Documentaries
- Directors
- Katri Myllyniemi, Vilja Autiokyrö
- Screenwriters
- Katri Myllyniemi, Vilja Autiokyrö
- Producers
- Mete Sasioglu
- Release year
- 2019
- SES grant
- 4 000 €
- Budget
- 11 000 €
- Production companies
- Sons of Lumière Oy
In the summer night, hundreds of mopeds and cross bikes gather in a secret square.
Nature Symphony
- Category
- Documentaries
- Directors
- Marko Röhr
- Screenwriters
- Marko Röhr
- Producers
- Hanna Järvinen, Marko Röhr
- Premiere
- 22.3.2019
- SES grant
- 50 000 €
- Budget
- 180 000 €
- Production companies
- MRP Matila Röhr Productions
- Distribution companies
- Nordisk Film