The last day of this year’s Midnight Sun Film Festival started with the morning discussion with director Mika Kaurismäki. Kaurismäki is one of the founders of the Festival, and the discussion conveyed a profound love for both cinema as an artform and the Midnight Sun Film Festival.
Finnish short films were judged by the traditional Film Panel lead by Ville Virtanen. Other members of the just jury were director Johanna Vuoksenmaa, “the wonder child turned renaissance genius” Olavi Uusivirta, journalist and publishing editor Iida Simes, and director and author Neil Hardwick. The absolute winner was Teemu Nikki’s A Mate (2007) a near relentless depiction of the consequences of curiosity. All About My Body Hair (2022) by Bella Meer and Kristiina Kekomäki was second and the third place was a tie between The Bridge (1981) by Marjut Rimminen and Kebab King (2019) by Jukka Kärkkäinen. Fittingly, the last place went to Felix Forsman’s educational piece A Bad Film (1950).
At her master class, the animation expert Jennifer Barker presented the visually inventive Czech film Invention for Destruction (1958). According to Barker, the film shows the audience how magical the world is by seamlessly combining different kinds of cinema from live action to stop motion animation and small-scale special effects. Invention for Destruction is a real tour de force of cinematic tools.
As expected, this year the audience wished for a rerun of Fallen Leaves by Aki Kaurismäki as the screenings sold out quickly. In addition, Georgia Oakley’s debut film Blue Jean and Veljko Vidak’s documentary Cinéma Laika got a rerun screening to cap off the Festival.
Image: Susanna Pesonen