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Seasoned Finnish producer Ilkka Matila of Mrp Matila Röhr has signed with Estonia’s Taska Film and locked early support from the Finnish Film Institute and local commercial channel MTV3 for the 2.7m film “Between the Hammer and the Sickle.” Nordisk Film holds Scandinavian rights.

To be pitched on Aug. 24 at the Nordic Co-Production Market in Haugesund, Norway, the title will be one of Matila’s most defining projects, a feature which he believes will stay, along the lines of the multi-awarded “Mother of Mine” or “The Eternal Road.”

“Between the Hammer and the Sickle” will be one of the first features ever to portray Finland’s illustrious former president Urho Kekkonen. Head of state for nearly 26 years, Kekkonen served as the longest-serving Finnish president from 1956 until 1981 and masterminded his country’s policy of neutrality, keeping at bay the threatening Soviet Union with which Finland shares 800 miles of border.

“I...

Almost anyone over 30 has owned a Nokia phone at some point in their lives, but not many people know that the iconic brand was created at a Finnish company formerly specializing in rubber boots.

Once the world’s biggest mobile manufacturer at the turn of the 21st century, the company was nearly wiped out of the smartphone market by Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android well before 2010, and ultimately sold its handset division to Microsoft in 2013.

When news broke of Microsoft’s takeover on TV, Finnish director Maarit Lalli’s first thought was, “There’s going to be only one [drama] on Nokia in Finland: It will either be me or someone else, and it’s most likely going to be made by a man,” she told Variety during a set visit in Helsinki.

The next morning, Lalli called Finnish TV channels and the Finish Film Foundation to check if...

Wild Bunch TV-sold “Albatros,” Turner Latin America’s banner title “Amarres” and REInvent Studios’ globe-trotting “Peacemaker” will feature at a 54 series-strong Buyers Showcase, which launches today March 25 as a backbone of Series Mania’s online Digital Forum, Europe’s first big festival experiment in a virtual marketplace.

Also featuring a powerful Co-Pro Pitching lineup, packed by pedigree producers and creatives, the Digital Forum’s industry audience, such as the number of accredited distributors, still has to be confirmed.

Some high-profile titles are missing: Opener “The Luminaries,” for example, from Fremantle and Working Title, and HBO closer “Run.” That said, the Buyer’s Showcase looks set to include five of Series Mania’s original 10 main competition entries and 13 of its 15 International Panorama titles, the festival’s two main sections.

Looking to the long-haul, as it also address urgent financial fall-out from Covid-19, the industry needs festival selection more than ever.

“Series...

GÖTEBORG, Sweden: “All the Sins”’ Finnish co-writers and creators Mika Ronkainen and Merja Aakko, winners of last year’s Nordisk Film & TV Fond Prize for outstanding Nordic screenplay, are developing for Mrk Matila Röhr Productions an adoption drama set between Finland and Guatemala.

Based on a true story, the six-part series “Act of Telling” (a working title) will examine child adoption through the story of a young Finnish couple and their Guatemala-born son. The respectable father has harbored a secret for seven years -a crime he committed when he travelled alone for the adoption. When a journalist friend starts to ask questions about the son’s biological parents, the mystery threatens to come to light.

Producer Ilkka Matilä said that Finnish public broadcaster Yle has ordered the concept from the writing duo. He’s now looking for a “potential co-production partner who could facilitate the Guatemala shoot.”

In early development,...

In “Finnish Blood, Swedish Heart,” Finland’s Mika Ronkainen, best known for his documentaries – 2003’s “Screaming Men,” 2009’s “Freetime Machos” – portrays the dislocation of 1970s Finnish emigrants in Sweden via a father-and-son musical road movie.

For “All the Sins,” a Nordisk Film & TV Fond Prize entry written with Merja Aakko, Ronkainen takes very much the same elements – a genre, here the murder mystery; a near documentary depiction, here of small town bigotry; and cornerstone family relationships – and recasts them in a drama series, awash in a sense of (unmerited) shame and guilt, with a contemporary feminist turn. The result is a crime thriller which works on several levels.

“All the Sins” begins in classic Nordic Noir with a body winched upside down in a barn as a shadowy assassin draws a knife seemingly to dispatch the victim. But, diverging from the Nordic Noir playbook, we never see the corpse. After a ten-year absence,...

Finland’s leading streaming service Elisa Viihde has ordered “Sphere of Shadows” (working title), an international political thriller series which will be directed by Aj Annila, the up-and-coming helmer who recently won a Jussi Award (Finnish equivalent to the Oscar) with “The Eternal Road.”

The ambitious ten-part series will be produced by Teea Hyytiä and Sari Lempiäinen from Zodiak Finland, while international sales will be handled by About Premium Content (Apc), an co-production and distribution outfit boasting offices in London and Paris.

Set in the 1950s, “Sphere of Shadows” (“Nyrkki”) unfolds in Helsinki which at the time was the focal point of the Cold War, as global powers and their intelligence agencies coalesced in the small neutral country that stood between the East and the West.

“Sphere of Shadows” follows a secret intelligence team whose mission is to defend the independence of Finland no matter the cost. And with the upcoming presidential election in Finland,...

Despite the devastating mudslides that overwhelmed the Santa Barbara, California community of Montecito last week — resulting in at least 20 deaths and the destruction of 100-plus homes — the Santa Barbara International Film Festival (Sbiff) will go on as usual. A reason to celebrate is “needed now more than ever,” wrote Sbiff director Roger Durling in a letter soon to be shared with festival-goers. He continued, “It is an opportunity for people to gather – reflect – experience – feel – and process,” noting that cinema attendance was strong during the Great Depression.

Launched in 1986, this year’s Sbiff will include films from 58 countries. Numbered among its 45 world premieres is opening night film “the public,” the first feature written and directed by Emilio Estevez since 2010’s “The Way.” Set at a Cincinnati public library, the film follows its homeless and marginalized patrons during a dangerous cold spell. The cast includes Alec Baldwin, Jena Malone (“Neon Demon...

The Works in Progress 2016 Awards at the 20th Tallinn Black Nights Film FestivalIndustry@Tallinn and Baltic Event is one of the fastest growing entertainment sector development summits in the winter season. They are held during the annual Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, the only Fiapf accredited Competition Feature Film Festival in Northern Europe.

The Works in Progress sessions were first organized 15 years ago as a regional showcase part of the Baltic Event. Last year, upcoming international films were added to the program and today, its 2 sections, Baltic Event Works in Progress and International Works in Progress, offer buyers, producers and programmers a diverse and dynamic range of local and international projects to discover.

Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event organized this year as well their Works in Progress pitching sessions. As a matter of fact, 26 films in production or postproduction looking for sales agents or festivals for international premieres were presented on...

Sidse Babett Knudsen joins cast of Finnish-Swedish-Estonian drama.

Borgen and The Duke Of Burgundy star Sidse Babett Knudsen has joined the cast of The Eternal Road (Ikitie), the Finnish-Swedish-Estonian drama directed by Aj Annila that begins shooting in Estonia today (June 20).

Ilkka Matila produces for Helsinki-based Mrp Matila Rohr Productions while co-producers are Martin Person from Sweden’s Person Anagram and Kristian Taska from Estonia’s Taska Film.

The film, which will shoot for about six weeks between now and January 2017, is based on Antti Tuuri’s bestselling book of the same name; Tuuri has written the screenplay alongside the director.

Tommi Korpela (A Man’s Job) plays Jussi Ketola, an American who returns to his Finnish homeland during the Great Depression. He is abducted by right wing thugs and flees to establish a new life in the Soviet Union where American immigrants take part in building a worker’s paradise until Stalin’s government turns against...

New Riga Meetings platform welcomes projects including two projects by Finnish film-maker Aku Louhimies.

Janis Nords’ second feature Mother I Love You and Juris Kursietis’ debut Modris were the big winners at the ¨Great Christopher¨ (¨Lielais Kristaps¨) National Film Competition held during the first edition of the Riga International Film Festival (December 2-12).

Nords, who graduated in film directing from the UK’s Nfts, received the top honour of best film as well as the trophy for best feature film director and best actress (for Vita Varpina’s performance as the single mother trying to make ends meet).

On presenting the direction prize to Nords, the competition jury’s chairman, veteran film director Janis Streics, said that he saw “a bright future ahead for Latvian cinema” on the strength of the line-up for this edition of the national film awards.

Mother I Love You, which is handled internationally by New Europe Film Sales, premiered at the...