Anneli Nygren’s rarely seen Minirusetti is this year’s Night School’s signature film and an uncanny brain-knot. The artist’s early-period soft-but-hard brutalism is a dark parody of participatory children’s television. Not for the faint-hearted.
The Whole Shebang presents the harsh circus entertainments of Depression-era New York, where human life is worth nothing. The work is among the late-career gems of Ken Jacobs, who grew up in Brooklyn’s poor neighborhoods. Co-creator is his wife Flo, as so often before. The couple’s daughter Nisi handled the computer.
What does sailing feel like when you cannot see? Giulia Grossmann’s Mer intérieure attempts to depict the experience through cinematic means. Méryll Ampe’s soundtrack combines intoxicating sea sounds with minimalist music. In Chiara Caterina’s Objet d’enigme, meanwhile, the dramaturgical objects of cinema – keys, doors, rooms – spin in emptiness, cut loose from context as structural clues in a Gordian knot.
Aya Kawazoe’s 幽明の虫 (“Interface”) is the first Japanese film in the history of Night School. A nasty insect burrows into the protagonist’s head – reality or fantasy? – and begins to torment them. A new and unlikely equation spills onto the screen: an intense fresco of psychological horror and experimental subjective cinema. Datna Éclat, created in collaboration between Tina Frank and the duo General Magic, is instead a synthesis of typography and modern electronic music. The French word éclat carries multiple meanings, including glow, scandal, magnificence, and bright explosion.
Falling autumn leaves are often a metaphor in art for the beginning of the end. In Paulo Abreu’s Autumn Leaves, the resurrection of leaves and trees sees the filmstrip defy gravity in the spirit of paternoster elevators. The screening concludes with Johann Lurf’s brand-new work Forever…Forever (Berlinale 2026). A fixed 65mm film camera not only records the events at the Ottenstein reservoir continuously over 22 months, but becomes an event in itself. The director’s Viennese colleague Martin Reinhart has described the film as “a planetary clock whose hands are made of light: it has a calm and precise choreography that recalls utopian architectures, even Tatlin’s Tower, without ever directly mentioning them.” Yet the true dynamo of this cosmological clockwork is the film’s sound: Jung An Tagen’s otherworldly beautiful composition, attuned to the movements of celestial bodies.
Lurf appeared as a guest director in Sodankylä 2019 when the compilation film ★, reaching toward the starry skies of film history, delighted the festival audience. Forever…Forever, embracing the ripple of the water’s surface, feels right at home on the banks of the river Kitinen. Sodankylä forever!
Mika Taanila
Screening duration: 78 min
Curated by: Mika Taanila
With thanks to: Azazel Jacobs, Gerald Weber, Mariya Nikiforova, Miguel Armas, Avreno Heikka
The screening is dedicated to Ken (1933–2025) and Flo (1941–2025) Jacobs.
FILMS
Minirusetti (Finland, 1978)
The Whole Shebang (USA, 2019)
Mer intérieure (France, 2024)
Objet d’enigme (Italy, Belgium, 2025)
幽明の虫 (Interface) (Japan, 2025)
Datna Éclat (Austria, 2025)
Autumn Leaves (Portugal, 2025)
Forever…Forever (Austria, 2026)