Helsinki intl. Film Festival – Love & Anarchy will begin its 38th edition on Thursday. Longtime artistic director and festival co-founder Pekka Lanerva announced this week that he has stepped down from the operational aspects of the Finnish event and has won Pauliina Stålberg, who will oversee the first edition since assuming the final postpost.
Ståhlberg speaks to Variety before the opening night, saying that the transition doesn’t represent a “big shift” from the previous edition, seeing festival veteran Outi Rehn take on the role of programming director.
“Change is always an opportunity to do things in a different, more modern way,” she says. The creation of a new four-person programming team points out how it will allow “a way to see the world more differently.”
The festival opened on September 18th with Joachim Torier’s Cannes Award winner, Sentimental Value, and on September 28th, it was closed for Jafar Panahie’s Palme de Orle Wine, saying that it was just an accident. Highlights include Mascha Schilinski’s cannes sensation “Falling Sound of Falling”, Oliver Lux’s “Sir” (Croisette’s Juj Prize winner), and Hafsia Helge’s queer palm winner “The Little Sister.”
The screening also pins the popular Scandinavian gems sidebar, featuring Richard Linklater’s “Nouvelle Wage,” Joshua Oppenheimer’s post-apocalyptic musical “The End,” starring Tilda Swinton, and Icelandic director Flynn Palson’s “Leave Love.”
A favourite of such a festival is some provocative programming strands that are trying to highlight the hot button issues of the day. Among them are the Fight the Power Series, which showcases rebellion films, and the free Palestinian series where festival organizers say “shes a light on what is no longer visible.” These include Fatma Hassona, a roughly 25-year-old Gaza photojournalist who was killed in an Israeli airstrike, and Yalla Parkour, the Doc NYC award-winner by Alexadeiter, and Sepidefalusi’s cooling documentary, Put Your Soul and Your Hand.
Ståhlberg points to such programming choices as evidence of the “huge responsibility” that her team feels in curating film choices for Helsinki audiences, and evidence that the festival and the filmmakers as a whole can “be on the side of the good guy.”
“We can actually make the world a better place through films and through love and disorder by choosing which films you are showing at festivals to raise our voices from Palestine and elsewhere (where) to broaden our horizons and get other voices heard,” she says.
Like many members of the Finnish film community, Ståhlberg has a long-standing romantic relationship with Helsinki INTL. In the film festival, and her first year, she is already determined to expand its reach.
“I’ve been to festivals since I was in (university),” she says. “The Festival of Love and Disorder is a highlight of Helsinki’s fall for the 60,000 people who are coming to watch our screening. I would also like to bring more younger generations and open it to the outskirts of Helsinki.”
The goal, she says, is to make the festival “more accessible to everyone.” Therefore, Ståhlberg hopes to expand its popular Pulpettikino education program. The initiative offers free screenings to thousands of Helsinki school children each year during the festival, and Ståhlberg says it wants to double the range to reach up to 20,000 children in the coming years.
After four years as director of the Finnish Institute in Madrid, Ståhlberg took on the role of executive director, bringing the long and highly regarded career in the cultural sector to the area. She was the director of the Finnish Institute in the UK and Ireland, and built a resume worthy of praise as a producer and journalist for broadcasting companies in particular. She is probably best known for producing the Nordic noir crime series “Deadwind,” which was a global hit on Netflix.
She took over during a period of increasing anxiety in the Finland screen industry and has faced cuts in recent years from the country’s right-wing government. Next week’s Parliament votes for measures to significantly cut funding for the Finnish Film Foundation, and estimates that such cuts could halve the country’s film and television production. She herself plans to appear before the government to express her support for the cultural sector.
“We must fight against one of the themes of love and disorder: power,” says Ståhlberg. “Everywhere, money is being cut down for cultures and different voices. With ultra-conservatives around the world, or at least Western democracy, that’s scary and we really have to do something together.”
The spirit of this collaboration continues to drive the Finnish film incident, an annual industry event that takes place alongside the Helsinki Festival, which will be held from September 24th to 26th. Under the stewardship of industry head Lydia Taylorson, the event features a loaded lineup of lectures, workshops and master classes. Among them are fiction, documentaries and series works from both emerging and established filmmakers.
Ståhlberg points to the event, one of the major industry disruptions in Scandinavia. This proves the strength of the number of small industries as a sign that local filmmakers are working on collaborations with both their neighbours and beyond.
“I think co-production and co-finance are important for our industry for now,” she says. “Northern Europe and Balticus, we are very small. We need to work together.”
Helsinki intl. Film Festival – Love & Anarchy will be held from September 18th to 28th.
