Projects by Aku Louhimies, Virpi Suutari, Pamela Tola, Jon Blåhed will be pitched Sept. 24 in Helsinki Finland’s biggest international film and TV drama market, Finnish Film Affair, unspooling parallel to the Helsinki Intl. Film Festival – Love & Anarchy, has unpacked its full program, rolling out Sept. 23-25 in the Finnish capital. In the pure Nordic tradition of mind-blowing chills and thrills, genre-bending content and documentaries are headlining the slate of 38 titles from the Nordics and beyond, to be pitched to 500-plus attendees at FFA’s centerpiece Showcase Day, Sept. 24.
Selected as FFA opener, Hanna Bergholm’s horror “Nightborn,” top winner at the Fantasia Festival and Berlinale Golden Bear contender, will set the tone for this year’s Nordic market, where eight Nordic genre pics in development will compete for best pitch, as part of a new partnership with the Nordic Genre Lab. The training and networking program is the brainchild of seasoned Finnish executive Laura Laaksonen (Purr PR), co-founder of Nordic Genre Lab with former Netflix executive Claire Willats (Two Magpie Entertainment). Genre projects to watch include Making Movies’ “Alma” helmed by Pete Riski (“Icebreaker,” “Dark Floors”) from a script by Ilja Rautsi (“Red Snow,” “Nightborn”), the first Faroese horror feature “Whistler,” produced by Outlier Projects, “Linden Lane 6,” produced by the prolific banner It’s Alive Films (“Euthanizer,” “100 Litres of Gold”) and “Trespassers,” produced by Patrick Andersson (“Midsommar”), with Mylla Films co-founder Jakob Abrahamsson.
Headlining the six-title documentary slate selected by Tayleron, Mourad-Anis Moussa (Visions du Réel) and Erika Dilday (American Documentary Inc.) is “Lonesome Land,” by prominent filmmaker Virpi Suutari. Besides Suutari’s latest plea to safeguard Finnish forests after her multi-awarded “Once Upon a Time in a Forest,” topics range from a tribute to working-class Italian men during WW2 in “Umarells – We Know Better,” to biopics about New York/Helsinki-based late artist Iria Leino in “Dear Iria,” and fallen-from grace Olympic medallist Mika Myllylä in “Myllylä.” On the scripted front, the eight films in development and five works in progress selected by Taylerson, Katre Kajamäe-Gupta (Eurimages) and Natasha Degnova (LeveK) play across an equally wide range of topics and genres. European Drive“All in all, it’s been very interesting to receive a record number of submissions for the Fiction in Development (45), Fiction in Progress (11-the largest number since 2022) and Documentaries (22), which proves the attractiveness of Finland as filming and production destination,” Taylerson observed.
To help Nordic producers and filmmakers further hone their skills, more than 20 top industry experts, such as Isabel Arrate Fernandez (IDFA), Jason Gutierrez (Tribeca), Hugo Rosak (Karlovy Vary), Jim Kolmar (SXSW), Celine Dornier (IPR.VC), James Copp (Night Train Media), Mette Damgaard-Sørensen (Danish Film Institute) and Kjetil Omberg (Norwegian Film Institute), will take center stage to discuss among other things how to better budget, finance a feature, co-produce, navigate the international festivals, distribution landscape and the next Agora EU program in Europe. The two-day panel sessions will close Sept. 25 with the popular XYZ masterclass, sponsored by U.S. genre specialists XYZ Films, FFA and Film Tampere, which will zoom in on how the Norwegian action comedy “The Trip” morphed into the U.S. remake “Over Your Dead Body,” shot in Tampere. XYZ Films founder Aram Tertzakian, producer of the U.S. version starring Jason Segel and Samara Weaving, will moderate the talk.
Furthermore, as part of the FFA training scheme Nordic Flair, 10 Nordic producers with a first feature project, will have access to the full FFA program and micro-sessions with mentors Max Malka (Banijay Finland), Jim Kolmar (SXSW), Gary Cranner (Mantra Films Norway) and Natascha Degnova (LevelK). It makes sense to tap into their expertise and insight and help Nordic professionals take their first step into the industry,” added Taylerson. Full list of FFA projects:Fiction in Development:“Babyface,” directed by Aleksi Delikouras, produced by Helsinkifilmi (Finland)“Big Deal,” directed by Hedda Mjøen, produced by Kruela Film (Norway, Finland, Estonia)“Kekri: Trick or Die,” directed by Jari Pauna, produced by Pari Pa
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