Acclaimed Finnish director Rauni Mollberg made several scandalous yet widely appreciated films. Former co-worker Veikko Aaltonen’s eye-opening documentary The Dinosaur looks at the relentless, often disturbing directing techniques behind Mollberg’s art and success.
Jörn Donner’s entire production can be considered as a self-portrait, a life-spanning performance. Whilst others have painted one image or another of Donner, John Webster’s interpretation differs in that it pulls most of its material from Donner’s last-intended interview in December 2019, and an immense never-before-seen collection of photographs from albums simply labelled “Donner – Privat”. As a result, the film morphs into an epilogue of sorts, of Donner’s life story.
Known for his sharp tongue and controversial statements, Jörn Donner has been an important cultural personality in Sweden and Finland since the fifties. Author, film director, film producer, journalist, critic and politician. Jörn Donner is known for producing Fanny and Alexander and received an Oscar for it. But he has also been known for being bellicose and naturally he fights with the filmmakers Alberto Herskovits and Olavi Linna as they try to film him. He is especially cantankerous when they ask him to do something in front of the camera that he finds inane. He doesn’t want to prostitute himself anymore, he wants to talk! This desire provides a key to this quick-witted man’s incessant restlessness and his quarrels stand as a backdrop that facilitate the dialog Donner wants to have.
Eero’s career as an author is spiraling down: he just can’t get started with his new novel. The ambitious actor Pihla is about to get her international break. Neither of them is willing to sacrifice their career even though their relationship is doing worse than ever. Void is a comedy-drama about the price of success and the agony of failure, and about situations where your partner just doesn’t get it.
In „Fuck Off 2“, Donner waxes sarcastic about the scourges in Finnish society by interviewing regular people. The film takes a theme of different living possibilities. Some people find happiness, others succumb to depression. Many still dream of a better life somewhere else. Donner himself undergoes cardiac surgery.
Harry Schein was an anomaly in Swedish cultural society. Equal parts playboy, intellectual, and political visionary, his life story could very well be the foundation of a Hollywood film. Citizen Schein is a film about a refugee who refused to look back, a film about powerful men, and the myths that fuel them.
A restaurateur befriends a Syrian refugee who has recently arrived in Finland.
Taking sauna is the Finnish people's national obsession, so there are two of the per five Fins, and they build theme everywhere, even on military operations and aboard vessels, but preferably near a lake, to dive in even on ice days, with trees to cut whisking birches from. Weekly, usually on Saturday, is considered a hygienic minimum, daily the good life, especially in summer and holidays. It's a family and/or social activity, relaxing and removing social barriers, but also linked to sports and all kinds of bonding.
Jörn Donner was a Swedish-speaking Finnish writer, film director, actor, producer, politician and founder of Finnish Film Archive. Internationally he was best known for his film Fanny and Alexander (1982), that won four Academy Awards, including the award for the best foreign language film. In Finland he was known for his work as an author, as well as having been member of both, Parliament of Finland and European Union.
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