Oona Airola wins Dragon Award for Acting in Göteborg
Airola’s role in The Missile, directed and written by Miia Tervo, charmed the jury. Homecoming got an honorary mention in the documentary competition.
Image: Ines Kjelbye / Göteborg Film Festival
Actor Oona Airola has been awarded the Dragon Award for Best Acting at the Göteborg Film Festival on Saturday, February 3, 2024.
The jury said: “With both raw vulnerability and a magnetic force of power, this actress delivers a heartfelt performance where she with a talented precision dances a beautiful dance between drama and comedy. Her character is stuck between a past love and a future one, a messy family (that you’d like to move in with) and a missile, and thanks to the beautiful performance of the actress, we’re stuck right in there with her.”
In The Missile, Airola plays Niina, a single mother who drifts into the middle of an international crisis in Inari when the Soviet Union shoots a missile across the Finnish border. Set in 1984, the drama-comedy directed and written by Miia Tervo, is about personal and national borders and boundaries.
The film is produced by Kaisla Viitala and Daniel Kuitunen for Komeetta. Its domestic premiere was last Friday, February 2.
Homecoming, a documentary feature by Suvi West and Anssi Kömi, received an honorary mention from the documentary jury:
“We want to acknowledge the achievement of the filmmakers, who, through a personal and sensitive lens, manage to give agency to sami items, that can at last reclaim their identity, connecting us to accurate struggles of indigenous peoples throughout the world.”