From 11-15 June, the Midnight Sun Film Festival in Sodankylä celebrates its 40th anniversary in distinguished company. Special guests are directors Margarethe von Trotta, Julien Temple, Alan Guiraudie, Léonor Serraille, Christopher Petit, and actor Dominique Sanda. Several Finnish filmmakers will also present their work.
Margarethe von Trotta (b. 1942) is one of the world’s leading makers of feminist cinema. The writer-director coming to the Midnight Sun Film Festival in June was one of the key figures of the German New Cinema, along with the likes of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wim Wenders and Werner Herzog, who renewed the cinematic tradition and addressed social issues. But von Trotta has been asking tough questions and challenging the status quo throughout her career. A selection of his most essential films will bear witness to this. The programme includes the Heinrich Böll adaptation The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (1975) depicting a West Germany trembling with fear and the loss of privacy, the terrorist film Sisters (1981), which won the main prize at the Venice Film Festival, and the biographical film Hannah Arendt (2012) of the yet again topical political philosopher.
Christopher “Chris” Petit (b. 1949) used to work as a critic for Time Out London but is now known for his essayistic films. Petit enjoys a cult following, particularly because of his debut feature Radio On (1979). This road movie charting Britain in the 1970s is famous for its music, ranging from David Bowie to Kraftwerk. The Festival will see a wide selection of the author’s work, from Radio On and An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1982) to the poignantly personal D is for Distance (2025), directed with his partner Emma Matthews and partly filmed in Sodankylä. The film uses free association to recount the story of the couple’s son and his epileptic seizures.
The Festival is honoured also to have the French actor Dominique Sanda (b. 1951), a legend of the silver screen, as one of its guests. She began her career already at 17, starring in Robert Bresson’s A Gentle Woman (1969) and quickly became known as the “French Garbo”. In addition to Sanda’s debut, the Festival’s programme presents a selection of her best films, which are also great successes for their directors. These include Vittorio De Sica’s The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970), Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist (1970), Mauro Bolognini’s The Inheritance (1976,) and Jacques Demy’s A Room in Town (1982), of which The Inheritance netted Sanda The Best Actress Award at Cannes. The Peacock’s Paradise (2021), directed by Laura Bispur, represents Sanda’s latest work, a powerful family drama in which Sanda plays the family matriarch.
The Briton Julien Temple (b. 1953) surfed his way into the consciousness of cinema audiences on the crest of the punk rock wave in the late 1970s. The counterculture-savvy Londoner has made his mark on music and film history in a career spanning almost 200 titles, not least with his videos for great names like The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, Whitney Houston and Neil Young. Temple’s best-known works include Absolute Beginners (1986) and Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten (2007). The former documents the London subculture of the late 1950s in a time of social upheaval. The biographical documentary about The Clash chief Joe Strummer has the same irresistible energy as the honorary consul of punk.
The prestigious French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma chose Alan Guiraudie’s (b. 1964) latest film, Misericordia (2024), as last year’s best film. The humorous thriller set among morally ambiguous people was a natural follow-up to the author’s acclaimed psychological thriller Stranger by the Lake (2013), which received the title of the best film of 2013 from the magazine and the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard: Best Director Prize. The filmmaker, who explores both the French countryside and the themes of queer desire, will also be seen in the heterosexual farce comedy Nobody’s Hero (2022), a departure for him, and his breakthrough work, The Old Dream That Moves (2001), lauded by Jean-Luc Godard.
Lyon-born writer-director Léonor Serraille (b. 1986) won The Caméra d’Or (Golden Camera) Award for Best First Feature at the Cannes Film Festival for his debut Montparnasse Bienvenüe (2017). Since then, she has carved out her niche among the most interesting names in cinema’s superpower. In Montparnasse Bienvenüe, Serraille introduced an enchantingly restless protagonist and tilted the narrative in a subtly comic direction. Serraille’s latest film, Ari (2025), is related to her debut, but it brings a documentary touch and a dose of melancholy to the story of the maladjusted protagonist.
One of the most original artists of the Midnight Sun Film Festival’s jubilee year comes from the domestic scene. Herra Ylppö (b. 1973) is already known as a musician – e.g., the singer-songwriter of the song Sodankylä by the band Maj Karma – as well as a writer, visual artist and music video director. With his recent film Kronos Kairos (2025), he can add the title of film director to his CV. Aki Kaurismäki called this work co-written by Ylppö and Mika Lätti (b. 1969) a “surrealist masterpiece”.
The Master Class hosts and Finnish guests will complement the guest list. Among the latter will be at least actors Elina Knihtilä, whose films include 100 Litres of Gold and Raptures, Ville Virtanen, the lead in the drama feature Never Alone, Toni “Protoni” Järvinen of Kronos Kairos and Jaana Saarinen of Long Good Thursday. The latter’s director Mika Kaurismäki, one of the festival’s founders will also be present.
The Festival’s film programme is curated by its Artistic Committee, which consists of Aki and Mika Kaurismäki and Artistic Director Timo Malmi.
The Midnight Sun Film Festival will be held in Sodankylä from 11 to 15 June. The Festival programme will be published on Friday, 23 May, and the Festival programme map on Monday, 26 May. Series tickets will go on sale on the same day. Advance ticket sales will start online on Wednesday, 28 May.
The Midnight Sun Film Festival thanks its partners:
Trade Union Pro, Finland Festivals Association, EU Creative Media, Kemijoki Oy, Laitilan Wirvoitusjuomatehdas Oy, National Audiovisual Institute (KAVI), Finnish Film Foundation (SES), Sodankylä Municipality, Finnish Cultural Foundation, Arts Promotion Centre (Taike), Tähtikuitu oy, YLE Teema