It’s an honour to introduce a filmmaker whose accomplishments apparently haven’t been distributed in Finland either on the silver screen, television or home media. And this despite the fact that Alain Guiraudie hails from no farther than France (he was born in the central southern part of the country, in Villefranch-de-Rouergue), even though his reputation has grown steadily from the beginning of this century and while his films have appeared on ”best of the year” lists for over a decade. For example, the legendary Cahiers du Cinéma chose both Stranger by the Lake (2013) and Misericordia (2024) as their best films of those respective years. Stranger by the Lake won Un Certain Regard in Cannes. And so on.
The most likely cause for this exile is obvious: even though Finland has made significant strides in tolerance, sexual minorities are still so marginalized that Guiraudie’s homosexual themes are likely to cause aversion. Even though Stranger by the Lake, Nobody’s Hero (2022) and Misericordia all skirt the edges of popular genres: they’re not only sexy but varyingly thrilling, funny and even romantic.
Guiraudie loves to combine and mix categories but his central focus is often crime, which has raised comparisons to Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang and Claude Chabrol. But there are also significant differences, so when one character is revealed to be a sometimes humorous catholic priest, interpretations draw parallels to Luis Buñuel. Guiraudie himself has discussed the concept of mercy and the influence of the protestant Ingmar Bergman…it will be thrilling to converse with him about all these enigmatic themes in the dawning sun of Sodankylä this year.
Timo Malmi