Mari Mantela: After Ego (Finland, 2026, 17 min)
With her award-winning short films (including the Risto Jarva Prize recipient Rabobesto – Or How I Saved a Monster), Mari Mantela has depicted identity crises and relationship dynamics when faced with life’s milestones. In After Ego, the focal point is in an actual border stone between the lands of two acrimonious brothers, who appoint lawyers and a land surveyor to find it.
Once their childhood playground, a babbling forest stream is now the milieu for a border dispute, where years of legal battles, envy and grudges are set to culminate. Can they find the border stone, and would it even solve anything?
The roles of the uncommunicative brothers are exquisitely played by a pair of absolute icons of Tampere theatre and television, Esko Roine and Ilmari Saarelainen, whose familiar faces seem gain new levels in black-and-white film. As it is, black-and-white cinematography is a poignant medium for a family feud theme, where many things seem black-and-white, but only on the surface. Water can erode a rock, but can even death put an end to a grudge?
Language: Finnish, subtitles in English
Pia Andell: Let’s Not Ruin the Party by Talking About Death (Finland, 2026, 39 min)
A master of both documentary and fiction, Pia Andell’s new novella film takes the characters from her earlier short Amidst (2024) to a Chekhovian villa setting.
Satu (Vera Kiiskinen) has found a new, younger man (Rasmus Slätis), whereas Vilma’s (Krista Kosonen) marriage is falling apart. Harri’s (Hannu-Pekka Björkman) illness has advanced, but he has stayed silent about his condition, and his wife Riitta (Meri Nenonen) doesn’t know how to help her husband in the face of his impending death. Jone (Tommi Korpela) and Minna (Ria Kataja) are hosting the summer party at their lovely seaside villa, but the struts behind this facade seem rotten somehow.
As per Finnish tradition, the sauna and hot tub see some emotional unburdenings, but the subtle performances make the quiet moments even more poignant. Great upheavals seem to loom behind the horizon, but at the beach it’s still summer, for a moment.
Original name: Ei pilata juhlia puhumalla kuolemasta. Language: Finnish, subtitles in
Teemu Nikki: Placeholder (Finland, 2026, 15 min)
The director of last year’s biggest domestic box office hit, 100 Liters of Gold, Teemu Nikki delightfully keeps finding time in his busy schedule for short films as well. His most recent short, Placeholder, is a speculation on what happens when the ever more pervasive platform economy meets relationship performance pressures.
With a cast of mainly Nikki’s stalwarts (including Olli Rahkonen, Pirjo Lonka, Hannamaija Nikander, Anssi Niemi), the film is a story about Heikki (Rahkonen) who works for a service providing lonesome people experience and practice on relationships via a ” placeholder.” But instead of domestic bliss, Heikki wants to give a realistic – even harsh – impression of these interactions, and not all the customers are happy with this. On the other hand, his own domestic life is going so swell that his partner is seeking help from the very same service.
While not providing any clear-cut answers, the film makes the viewer think about the interface between modern society’s relationship expectations and real life consequences. How to be at your best, if you’re always expecting the worst?
Language: Finnish, subtitles in English
Liina Härkönen
Duration 71 min.