The documentary style of semitruths and shock reportage started by Mondo Cane and culminated in Farewell Africa dominated the field of commercial documentary film in the 1960s and 70s – or, more precisely, was the first commercially successful documentary subgenre since the silent era. These ”mondo films” with their mishmash-style documentation of the world would find their topics from exotic places such as the Far East or rainforests, but also the Nordic countries, and after the success of Svezia, inferno e paradiso (1968) set in Sweden, it was time for crazy Finland.
Relegated to a filler programme in Italian TV after a short theatrical run, Dove non è peccato / Mondo Finlandia is one of the great rediscoveries of the 2020s and a more affectionate and endearing representative of an exploitative subgenre.
The midnight sun seems to have disarmed the sensationalist crew from their most ill-disposed attitudes, even though they have plenty to marvel at with tech student dipping, reindeer castration, a graveyard orgy and free love at the Arctic Circle – plus a conscientious objector by the name of Peter von Bagh, who Giorgia Moll (known from films of Godard and Mankiewicz) chances upon for an interview at the Sibelius Monument and the trash shoot of the Helsinki Surgical Hospital.
Petteri Kalliomäki