Documentaries
Eye to Eye
- Category
- Documentaries
- Directors
- John Webster
- Screenwriters
- John Webster
- Producers
- John Webster
- Release year
- 2020
- SES grant
- 90 000 €
- Budget
- 204 000 €
- Production companies
- JW Documentaries Oy
Restorative dialogue (Redi) is a form of trauma therapy for the family members of victims of violent crime. Under specific circumstances it can be beneficial for them to meet the perpetrator – in most cases the murderer – face to face. The most important criteria for this meeting is that the perpetrator should want to ask for forgiveness for the crime. But the benefits are not only one-sided – this face-to-face meeting can also help the perpetrator come to terms with the crime they committed.
The film follows two such cases over several months. During the film we witness the unlocking of a state of prolonged grief in the families and the beginnings of a healing process, and we see the perpetrators coming to accept responsibility for their crimes. Major themes in the film are love, loss, the power of asking for forgiveness, and the importance of mourning.
Save and Quit?
- Category
- Documentaries
- Directors
- Esa Illi
- Screenwriters
- Esa Illi
- Producers
- Klaus Heydemann
- Release year
- 2020
- SES grant
- 92 500 €
- Budget
- 205 000 €
- Production companies
- Inland Film Company Oy
A feature documentary about today’s youth, about what it is like to grow up in a constantly changing world; a world moving at rapid pace, where almost nothing seems to be certain anymore. Growing up in the era of ‘digitalisation of everything’, sometimes described as ’Liquid times’. It is also a documentary outlining for us that world. The world as it actually is for the teenagers. The world in which our children live, even if we, their parents, don’t.
Writing with Fire
- International co-production: IN-FI
- Category
- Documentaries
- Directors
- Sushmit Ghosh, Rintu Thomas
- Screenwriters
- Sushmit Ghosh, Rintu Thomas
- Producers
- Sushmit Ghosh, Rintu Thomas, John Webster
- Release year
- 2021
- SES grant
- 20 000 €
- Budget
- 219 000 €
- Production companies
- JW Documentaries Oy
In one of the most socially oppressive and patriarchal states of India emerges a newspaper run entirely by rural women belonging to the Dalit or ‘untouchable’ community. Meera, its popular political reporter, decides to magnify the local paper’s impact with an audacious move – to transform from print to a digital news agency. Working in media dark villages, mocked and discouraged, this is the story of a visionary woman’s feisty spirit in building what will probably be the world’s first digital news agency run entirely by rural Dalit women.
Dear Mother
- Category
- Documentaries
- Directors
- Paul-Anders Simma
- Screenwriters
- Paul-Anders Simma
- Producers
- Paul-Anders Simma, Margus Önapuu
- Release year
- 2020
- SES grant
- 75 000 €
- Budget
- 370 000 €
- Production companies
- Saamifilmi Oy
Dear Mother is about sixteen year old Tasha who lives at an orphanage in Kandalaksha, N.W Russia. One day an unknown woman calls her and claims that she is her mother. Tasha is shocked since the authorities had declared her mother dead by a drug overdose several years ago, but her body was never recovered.
The secret at the heart of this film is in Tasha’s forgotten hometown Lujaur. Different native tribes where relocated to this swamp on the middle of the tundra by the Soviet authorities. The objective was to create a utopian society where a new breed of socialistic humans would emerge. Instead many natives where abused in the name of progress. It’s a story about buried secrets and the search for identity, the universal need to understand why our families turn out the way they do.
Future Remains
- Category
- Documentaries
- Directors
- Anna-Karin Grönroos
- Screenwriters
- Anna-Karin Grönroos
- Producers
- Oskar Forstén
- Release year
- 2021
- SES grant
- 80 000 €
- Budget
- 260 000 €
- Production companies
- Parad Media Oy
Future Remains is a documentary about the power of idealism through the story of Henrik Wahlforss, an industrial designer who believed design can change the future.
Anerca, Breath of Life
- Category
- Documentaries
- Directors
- Markku Lehmuskallio, Johannes Lehmuskallio
- Screenwriters
- Markku Lehmuskallio, Johannes Lehmuskallio
- Producers
- Markku Lehmuskallio
- Premiere
- 28.8.2020
- SES grant
- 44 000 €
- Budget
- 132 000 €
- Production companies
- Giron-filmi Oy
The film progresses though the power of music, dance, performance and depiction of everyday life. Gaining your daily subsistence, the ordinary life is the central source for music and other kinds of self-expression. It is life itself breathing. The cultures depicted in the film are the Chukchi, Alaskan and Canadian Inuit, the Sayisi Dene people of Canada, Greenlanders, Sámi, Nenets, Selkups and Nganasans.
School of Hope
- Category
- Documentaries
- Directors
- Mohamed El Aboudi
- Screenwriters
- Mohamed El Aboudi
- Producers
- Pertti Veijalainen, Jenny Timonen
- Release year
- 2021
- SES grant
- 150 000 €
- Budget
- 315 000 €
- Production companies
- Illume Ltd. Oy
- Distribution companies
- Yle
School of Hope tells about a nomad tribe struggling to get education for their children, and a young teacher trying to help them while suffering himself of the Government’s indifference toward rural regions.
Climate change and overgrazing have brought poverty to the old nomad tribes of the High Plateau of Atlas in Morocco and forced them to partial settlement. Now faced with the changing environment and the necessity to settle down, they feel more lost than when wandering with their cattle in the endless desert. They’d need wells, electricity, health care and schools, but the Government is not interested in their troubles.
When the Dehbi tribe couldn’t get a State school to their area, they decided to build it themselves, and through an association managed to get a teacher to come there. The small school can only offer the first elementary classes, after which the children should move to town to continue studying. Even if the family might be able to afford sending a child there, they don’t want to send the girls, worried of their safety. The situation is complex; the nomads know they need education but are also afraid of it, afraid of losing their children.
Invisible Demons
- Category
- Documentaries
- Directors
- Rahul Jain
- Screenwriters
- Rahul Jain, Iikka Vehkalahti
- Producers
- Iikka Vehkalahti
- Premiere
- 26.11.2021
- SES grant
- 179 000 €
- Budget
- 1 058 000 €
- Production companies
- Toinen katse
- Distribution companies
- Pirkanmaan elokuvakeskus
A prismatic meditation on pollution in the capital of the World’s biggest free-market democracy and the most polluted and populated city, Delhi – a film about the pollution inside of the human mind.
Harmageddon Armageddon in the Livingroom
- Category
- Documentaries
- Directors
- Katja Niemi
- Screenwriters
- Katja Niemi
- Producers
- Oskar Forstén
- Release year
- 2020
- SES grant
- 55 000 €
- Budget
- 116 000 €
- Production companies
- Franckforstén Oy
The Jehovah’s Witnesses’ internal judicial committee concluded that Josefina, 11 years old, had seduced her abuser, because “an adult wouldn’t touch a child that way.” Josefina believed she was guilty and remained silent. Until now. 25 years later she relives her traumas by reconstructing scenes from her childhood with other former Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Walk the Tideline
- Category
- Documentaries
- Directors
- Anna Antsalo
- Screenwriters
- Anna Antsalo
- Producers
- Venla Hellstedt, Elli Toivoniemi
- Premiere
- 21.5.2021
- SES grant
- 105 000 €
- Budget
- 363 000 €
- Production companies
- Tuffi Films Oy
- Distribution companies
- Tuffi Films Oy
Walk the Tideline is a film about the traces we leave behind us. It follows beachcombers at shores trying to find treasures. Between the people the film drifts out to the unknown oceans and shows us the diverse system of ocean currents, how they carry and swirl our history in small pieces.