Finnish filmmaker Hannah Nordenswan makes her documentary debut with “Sense and Sense.” It tells the story of a unique relationship between a mother and her daughter working in a cemetery. The project won the Best Documentary Award at the Finnish Film Incident, held from September 24-26.
Produced by Helsinki-based Zone2 Pictures, “Sense and Sensibility” follows a recovering alcoholic who leaned against his mother for support. Their relationships become symbiotic, and their lives are both intertwined with the cemetery that live in the homes of employees.
However, the two women are extremely opposites. Karita’s personality is being charged with emotion, but her daughter Christa relies on logic and rationality. After getting calm, she refuses to let people in. Instead, her life revolves around a cemetery, her mother and rescue dog.
But over time, Carita’s retirement begins to loom, and a heart attack, coupled with an increase in fatigue from Christa’s job demands, changes their relationship with each other towards the future. Faced with new uncertainty, Christa must decide whether he is ready to leave the cemetery’s safety and stand up to the world beyond its gates.
Speaking to Variety in Helsinki, Norden’swan recalls encountering an article about a quirky mother-daughter duo from the late 2010s in which Finnish newspapers featured women and unconventional family arrangements. “I kept it open as a computer tab for two years,” the director said.
Norden’s Wang is a skilled journalist who directed a handful of documentary shorts, left Helsinki and attended a master’s program at the Visual Arts School in New York, returning to Finland just before the outbreak of the Corona Viros pandemic. Like many others back then, she said she found herself obsessed with the idea of death.
It brought her back to Christa and Karita. Christa and Carita burned work, comforted the lament, and digged into the graves, delving into the work they dealt with with grace and humor. Norden’s Wang wondered, “Maybe they could make me feel more comfortable with the idea of death?”
As we approached the director, the women were pretty much perfect for the camera. “They thought, ‘Well, this was going to be a good reality show. Everything that happens here is so crazy and people should know about it,” Norden’s Wang said. “I think they also admit that their relationship is pretty special.”
Nordenswan began filming in 2022 and “very quickly I realized they had this very unique relationship,” she said. “They are very interesting characters. The death part became more background than the subject (of the film).”
“Sense and sensitivity” surprised the ju judges in a Finnish film incident. He praised its “clear vision” and “deep human yet extraordinary themes” while presenting the story of a mother and daughter. Ju-deceased the film “promises to portray death as a natural part of life, and to capitalize on the comedy tone and strong stylistic choices from the director in the parts.”
Nordenswan originally aimed to create “meaning and sensibility” as a way to overcome her fear of dying, but the filmmaking process didn’t bring about the results she wanted. But she said it was a satisfying journey nonetheless.
“Working on this film now makes me feel scared of death in the way I wanted it, the way I wanted it,” she said. “But that influenced the way I think about my relationship with my mother. I think I learned something about trying to see the best of your mother or daughter, and how the main characters in this film do.”
