The Midnight Sun Film Festival was founded in 1986 by Finnish filmmakers, e.g. the Kaurismäki brothers, and the Municipality of Sodankylä. The village of Sodankylä is located in the heart of Finnish Lapland, some 120 kilometers above the Arctic Circle, where the sun doesn’t set at all in the summertime. The nature of Lapland and the nightless night provide the Midnight Sun Film Festival a setting no other festival can compete!
The atmosphere of the Midnight Sun Film Festival is one of the most unique in the whole world: the most fascinating film directors around the world, up-and-coming talents, the international audience and the inhabitants of Sodankylä meet under the midnight sun in the relaxed and informal “spirit of Sodankylä”. Without any formal restraints, the festival is best characterised by its pure love for cinema.
Films are shown in four venues for 24 hours a day, and the actual time is easily forgotten as the sun shines as brightly at 4 AM as it does at 4 PM.
The festival programme is an enticing combination of old and new. Timeless masterpieces of veteran filmmakers will be presented side by side with the most engrossing contemporary films. In the master class screenings leading film critics will provide their insight to cinema’s finest classics, and music films are given a new spin in the karaoke screenings. To top it all, the undisputed highlights of the festival are the glorious silent film concerts.
The programme also includes new Finnish productions, films for children and premiere screenings; altogether about 100 feature films presented in over 120 screenings. To crown the cinematic celebration, every since its origin festival has hold morning discussions with the main guests. Who wouldn’t be interested in hearing which films the legendary directors would take with them to a desert island.
Thanks to our guests throughout the years, the spirit of Sodankylä is well known around the world. Just to mention a few, the following persons have visited the Midnight Sun Film Festival:
1986: Samuel Fuller, Jonathan Demme, Bertrand Tavernier, Jean-Pierre Gorin, Eduard Zahariev
1987: Michael Powell, Jacques Demy, Jim Jarmusch, D. A. Pennebaker, Juliet Berto, Thelma Schoonmaker, Stefan Jarl, Tom Luddy, Raymond Durgnat
1988: Monte Hellman, Paul Schrader, Dušan Makavejev, Aleksei German, Krzysztof Zanussi, Ali Özgentürk, Peter Wollen, Nils Gaup
1989: Paul Morrissey, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Otar Ioseliani, John Berry, Vadim Abdrašitov, Idrissa Ouédraogo, Andi Engel
1990: Richard Fleischer, Manoel de Oliveira, Ettore Scola, Jean-Pierre Léaud, João Bénard da Costa, Octavio Bezerra, Helle Ryslinge
1991: Andre de Toth, László Benedek, Agnès Varda, Chantal Akerman,Alberto Lattuada, Jean-Charles Tacchella, Enzo Serafin, Étienne Chatiliez, Adrian Johnston, Ville Salminen
1992: Roger Corman, Claude Chabrol, Jan Troell, Nikolai Dostal, Lone Scherfig, Danièle Dubroux, Esko Salminen
1993: Joseph H. Lewis, Dino Risi, Chris Marker, Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Julio Médem, G. Cabrera Infante, Elina Salo
1994: Robert Wise, Mario Monicelli, Luis García Berlanga, Stanley Donen, John Sayles, Sara Driver, Anneli Sauli
1995: Robert Parrish, Agnieszka Holland, Victor Erice, Maud Linder, Richard Price, Friðrik Þór Friðriksson, Fred Keleman
1996: Jean Dréville, Claude Sautet, Robert Boyle, Doris Dörrie, Stefano Incerti, Nils Arden Oplev, Åke Lindman
1997: Gianni Amelio, Vincent Sherman, Jerzy Skolimowski, István Szabó, Costas Ferris, Herbert Achternbusch, Nicolas Winding Refn
1998: Youssef Chahine, Terry Gilliam, Chris Marker, Robby Müller, Stefan Jarl, Wim Wenders, Leonard Kastle, Anna Bonaiuto, Knut Erik Jensen, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Pirjo Honkasalo
1999: Edgardo Cozarinsky, Costa-Gavras, Francesco Rosi, Angela Winkler, Murali Nair, Gabriel Retes
2000: Bob Rafelson, Paolo Taviani, Ivan Passer, Shinji Aoyama, Jean Douchet
2001: Freddie Francis, Sergio Sollima, Jerry Schatzberg, Agnès Jaoui, Jim Hoberman, Thierry Frémaux
2002: Francis Ford Coppola, Miklós Jancsó, Fernando Solanas, Denys Arcand, Luce Vigo, Jan Cvitkovič
2003: Irvin Kershner, Emir Kusturica, Jean Rouch, Bent Hamer, György Pálfi, Émilie Deleuze, Joachim Król, Matti Kassila
2004: Val Guest, Nanni Moretti, Marlen Hutsijev, Wolfgang Becker, Jörn Donner, Alain Bergala, Michael Henry Wilson, Jörn Donner
2005: Roy Ward Baker, Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, Yeşim Ustaoğlu, Juan Pablo Rebella & Pablo Stoll, Hans Weingartner, Pepe Danquart
2006: Gian Vittorio Baldi, Caroll Ballard, Andrei Smirnov, Jafar Panahi, Isabelle Stever, Mercedes Álvarez, Jasmine Trinca, Naum Kleiman
2007: Abbas Kiarostami, Claude Goretta, Vittorio De Seta, Amos Gitai, Elia Suleiman, Giuseppe Bertolucci, Pascale Ferran, Detlef Buck, Kadri Kõusaar
2008: Miloš Forman, Andrei Kontšalovski, Seymour Cassel, Nils Gaup, Veiko Õunpuu, Lasse Pöysti
2009: John Boorman, Robert Guédiguian, Fatih Akin, Samira Makhmalbaf, Sergei Dvortsevoi, Andreas Dresen, Markku Lehmuskallio & Anastasia Lapsui
2010: Pedro Costa, Terence Davies, Javier Rebollo, Pietro Marcello, Samuel Maoz, Pelin Esmer, David Robinson, Bernard Eisenschitz, Vesa-Matti Loiri
2011: Michael Chapman, Souleymane Cissé, Atom Egoyan, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Denis Côté, Athina Rachel Tsangari, Tony Palmer, Nick James
2012: Harriet Andersson, Alan Rudolph, Joe Dante, Béla Tarr, Taina Elg, Ruben Östlund, Tony Rayns, Foster Hirsch
2013: Philip Kaufman, Marco Bellocchio, Claire Denis, Christian Mungiu, Jan Troell, Peter Strickland, Gian Luca Farinelli
2014: Olivier Assayas, Paweł Pawlikowski, Alice Rohrwacher, Katell Quillévéré, Hélier Cisterne, Samantha Fuller
2015: Mike Leigh, Nils Malmros, Christian Petzold, Whit Stillman, Miguel Gomes, Małgorzata Szumowska
2016: Jiří Menzel, Bill Forsyth, Fernando Trueba, Jonás Trueba, Dagur Kári, Gianfranco Rosi, Frédéric Strauss, Kirsti Wallasvaara
2017: Carlos Saura, Hanna Schygulla, Bertrand Bonello, Per Fly, Eija Pokkinen
2018: Barbet Schroeder, Bulle Ogier, Dominik Graf, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, José Luis Guerín, Olivier Assayas, Kristiina Halkola, Eero Melasniemi
2019: Fernando Meirelles, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Marzieh Meshkini, Arnaud Desplechin, Pernilla August, Kent Jones, Mark Jenkin, Johann Lurf, Nora Fingscheidt, Pirjo Honkasalo, Eeva Litmanen
2022: Nicolas Meyer, Ildikó Enyedi, Mathieu Amalric, Karim Aïnouz, Lenny Abrahamson
2023: Sergei Loznitsa, Mary Sweeney, Emmanuel Mouret, Alma Pöysti, Jussi Vatanen, Anna Hints, David Wagner
2024: Leos Carax, Alfonso Cuarón, Alice Rohrwacher, Asli Özge, Dag Johan Haugerud, Adilkhan Jeržanov, Virpi Suutari, Martti Suosalo, Pirkko Hämäläinen, Katja Gaurilof, Oona Airola