Finnish Film Week in Belgrade to open with Family Time

The 7th Finnish Film Week takes place April 11–15, 2024.

Image: Audience at the 2022 Finnish Film Week in Belgrade.

Serbian filmmaker Stefan Arsenijevic has curated a selection of eight films for this year’s festival. The opening film will be Family Time, written and directed by Tia Kouvo who will also visit the festival.

The selected films:

• Bubble (dir. Aleksi Salmenperä)
• Family Time (dir. Tia Kouvo)
• Four Little Adults (dir. Selma Vilhunen)
• Hit Big (dir. JP Valkeapää)
• Je’vida (dir. Katja Gauriloff)
• Karaoke Paradise (dir. Einari Paakkanen)
• The Woodcutter Story (dir. Mikko Myllylahti)
• The Worst Idea Ever (dir. Pamela Tola)

Stefan Arsenijevic writes about the selection and the Serbian audiences affinity for Finnish cinema:

“Starting from 2010, Finnish Film Week in Belgrade has quickly grown into the audience favorite event, happening at the iconic Cultural Centre of Belgrade Movie Theatre, which last year celebrated the 60th anniversary and at the same time won the prestigious Best Programming Award from Europa Cinemas.

It’s really interesting that there’s such fondness for Finnish films here. I can’t completely explain it. Obviously, there’s the high quality of films, but I guess also partly it’s the exotic of the distant land in the north, partly recognizing the peculiar Finnish sense of humor that resembles ours.

The festival is held biennially, so I had the pleasure of watching Finnish films from previous two years and selecting eight diverse and very special films.

I have a feeling that all of the selected films in some way explore the meaning of family in the modern times. Dysfunctional families, atypical families, extended families. Families whose members establish alternative connections, trying to be honest and self-consistent. Family, as an institution, just like the majority of other institutions nowadays, has been enduring tectonic changes. Funny or pessimistic, weird or surreal, these films ask the right, intriguing questions and, most importantly, they find humanity and warmth even when they appear to be long lost.

We are especially excited that Tia Kouvo will be our guest this year. We will open the festival with her extraordinary film Family Time. As always, we are looking forward to welcome Jaana Puskala, a great, dedicated ambassador of Finnish films who has been supporting the festival from the very beginning.

Finnish Film Week in Belgrade is organized by Cultural Centre of Belgrade and Finnish Film Foundation, with the support of the Finnish Embassy in Belgrade.”