Mia Halme: Fabulous Cow Ladies (Finland, 2024, 30 min)
An award-winning documentarian with a long career, Mia Halme gained wide attention last year with her HBO documentary series First Five, depicting the five female ministers in Sanna Marin’s cabinet. In her latest short documentary, Fabulous Cow Ladies, Halme focuses on another kind of matriarchal community, three cows and their three caretakers.
Joy, Crumb, and Sweetie spend their summers outdoors, eating leaves and rubbing themselves on tree trunks. The caretakers of the cow trio, Heli, Anu, and Satu, look after them and give them scratches – if they are allowed. Come winter, these fabulous cow ladies are faced with grief, but when spring returns, the cycle of nature may continue.
Beautifully shot, the sound design of Janne Laine and score by Lau Nau – who delighted us at silent screenings last year – make us breathe in the summer paradise. The life of the cows seems idyllic, but we are also reminded that 20 percent of Finland’s cows only see outdoors on their way to the slaughter truck.
Elina Talvensaari: How to Please (Finland, 2023, 26 min)
September 2015. Wed Al-Asad flees the volatile conditions in Iraq to Finland, registering at the Pasila Police Station. He does what he’s told, working and studying, and seems to be successful in everything, except in the eyes of the Immigration Service. To the faceless, whispering system, he is suspicious, a presumed abuser of the welfare state, and nothing seems to convince the system otherwise. The stripped setting and electronic soundtrack illustrating Al-Asad’s story create an impression of the world’s most frustrating video game where you can’t seem to beat any levels, but quitting is impossible.
How to Please premiered at the prestigious IDFA documentary film festival in Amsterdam. Director Elina Talvensaari, who won several awards with her earlier films How to Pick Berries (2010) and Lady Time (2019), saw How to Please win three awards at the Tampere Film Festival and, later that month, the Jussi Award for Best Short Film.
Risto-Pekka Blom: Oh No, Lasse Falls! (Finland, 2023, 19 min)
Where were you when Lasse Virén fell at the 1972 Munich Olympics? Well, the younger portion of our festivalgoers might have been still living their previous lives, but especially for the children of 1970s and 80s in Finland, Lasse Virén’s dramatic fall during the 10,000 metres final and subsequent rise to Olympic victory has been consecrated as a high point of Finnish uniform culture.
Risto-Pekka Blom’s intense but humorous alternative version of this great event of sports history plays with the covert links between sports and politics, laying out what happens when, ahead of the race, a six-man team led by the mysterious Kari (Hannu-Pekka Björkman) enters the bowels of a barren bunker. They are on a secret mission, on which hinges not only the self-esteem of an entire nation but also the authority of the number one man in the republic. In March, Lasse Falls won the Main Prize for films under 30 minutes at Tampere Film Festival’s National Competition, a second of its kind for director Blom.
Heta Jäälinoja: Nun or Never! (Finland, 2023, 11 min)
A secluded convent in a peaceful nature setting. The nuns wake up to start their morning routines, and it’s time for another day of contemplation. But then, one of the sisters sees a shocking turn to her garden chores, as the ground yields something very surprising. This awakens the nun’s hidden desires, making her question her place in this seemingly unanimous and harmonic, black-veiled group.
Director Heta Jäälinoja’s previous animation Penelope (2016) was screened at over a hundred festivals around the world, receiving at least a dozen prizes. Nun or Never! continues in the same vein; it premiered at the world’s biggest animation festival in Annecy, France in June 2023 and has since snagged several awards both in Finland and abroad. The idea that a person’s inner world cannot be judged by their outer appearance, no matter how uniform, is sure to resonate with Sodankylä’s audience as well.
Liina Härkönen