Award-winning Mike Leigh among top guests of Midnight Sun Film Festival

Seven-time Oscar nominee, Cannes and Venice film festival winner Mike Leigh is one of the distinguished guests of Midnight Sun Film Festival 2015. Also included in the list of esteemed international filmmakers in Sodankylä this summer are Christian Petzold (Germany), Nils Malmros (Denmark) and Whit Stillman (USA).

Mike Leigh (b. 1943), the winner of Cannes Palme d’Or (Secrets and lies, 1996) and best director (Naked, 1993) as well as Venice Film Festival’s Leone d’Oro (Vera Drake, 2004), is one of the most celebrated guests attending the 30th anniversary of Midnight Sun Film Festival.

Leigh, who portrays everyday situations and interpersonal collisions in human relations in humorous and masterful way, last brought the painter biography Mr. Turner (2014) to the silver screen. Among his most recent works are Happy-Go-Lucky (2008) and Another Year (2010).

Included in the category of main guests is also Christian Petzold (b. 1960), one of the leading figures of “Berlin School”, which was born in Germany in the 1990s. Petzold’s main works from last years are Berlin Film Festival Silver Bear winner Barbara (2012) and Phoenix (2014), which will receive its Finnish premiere in Sodankylä.

Whit Stillman (b. 1952) rose to prominence with his debut work Metropolitan in 1990. One of the most original directors in Scandinavian film, Danish Nils Malmros (b. 1944), will also be present. Included in the list of international guests are also the star of many of Leigh’s works as well as countless British TV-films, Marion Bailey, and French documentary filmmaker Auberi Edler, a director of the documentary of Aki Kaurismäki film Le Havre.

Included in the star cluster of Finnish guests are actresses Minna Haapkylä, Armi Toivanen and Kirsti Wallaswaara as well as directors Petri Kotwica, Anssi Mänttäri and Ville Suhonen. Also Aki and Mika Kaurismäki, who form the artistic committee of MSFF with artistic director Timo Malmi, will be present.

Additional information about guests, master classes, scholars, schedules and much, much more will be published later.

INTRODUCING THE FIRST FESTIVAL GUESTS OF MSFF 2015

MIKE LEIGH

English director-screenwriter Mike Leigh (b. 1943) has been one of the big names of international film for decades. To indicate this, we could mention Leigh’s Cannes Palme d’Or (Secrets and lies, 1996) and his best director’s award (Naked, 1993) as well as his Venice Film Festival’s Leone d’Oro (Vera Drake, 2004), and his seven Oscar nominations.

Leigh portrays everyday situations and interpersonal collisions in human relations in humorous and masterful ways. He is known for his extraordinarily long practice periods, and because of them, the acting in his films is extremely nuanced, intensive and internalized.

Leigh, who is often compared to Japanese Yasujirô Ozu, will bring to Sodankylä – among other films – Secrets and lies, a rough take on family relations, Vera Drake with Imelda Staunton’s everlasting performance, the exuberant Happy-Go-Lucky (2008) led by Sally Hawkins, sharp-sighted drama Another Year (2010) as well as splendidly jagged painter biography Mr. Turner (2014).

CHRISTIAN PETZOLD

Christian Petzold (s. 1960) is one of the leading figures of the ”Berlin school”, which was born in Germany in the 1990s. It must be mentioned that Aki Kaurismäki considers Petzold as one of the best contemporary directors in Europe, if not the whole world.

We are already familiar with Berlin Film Festival Silver Bear winner Barbara (2012), a nuanced DDR portrait of a female doctor, starring director’s regular star Nina Hoss. In Sodankylä we will be able to witness the Finnish premiere of Phoenix (2014), an ambiguous post-war Berlin depiction with hitchockian undertones.

There was no cinema in Petzold’s small home town of Cologne. However, when he was 17, he received Francois Truffaut’s Hithcock book from his parents and proceeded to watch 41 of Hitch’s films: from that, a cinefile emerged.

His prominent, previous films include Vainout (2000), a profile of a terrorist family; Gespenster (2005), an intersecting story puzzle from contemporary Berlin; the marriage thriller Yella (2007); and Jerichow (2008), a love triangle in multi-cultural Germany.

WHIT STILLMAN

Whit Stillman rose to prominence in American film in 1990 with his elegant debut Metropolitan, which was celebrated in Cannes and received an Oscar nomination for best screenplay.

The charmful conversation comedy about upper class youth and a middle class freshman of New York’s Upper East Side was compared to films of Woody Allen and Eric Rohmer. Nevertheless, Stillman’s gentle, fondly ironic approach is definitely his own, as we have seen later on in his autobiographical post-Franco Spain portrayal Barcelona (1994) as well as The Last Days of Disco (1998), the culmination of disco film fever of its time.

After his trilogy in comedy of manners, Stillman remained on the bench for 13 years while trying to cope with the ever-commercializing American production culture. Then he returned with the witty and appealing college girl campus comedy Damsels in Distress (2011). He has also worked as an actor, written novels and directed episodes in TV series Homicide and The Cosmopolitan.

NILS MALMROS

When Nordic films were still being shown in Finnish cinemas in the 1980s, all the films of Denmark’s number one director at the time, Nils Malmros (b. 1944), were also screened here. Nobody could forget the “Scandinavian Truffaut’s” masterful schoolchild portrayal Tree of Knowledge (1981), a searing story of pubescent love and growing pains in the 1950s.

In his production, Malmros has, in almost unique manner, addressed occurrences of his life and his family’s life in almost three generations. His comeback film Sorrow and Joy (2013) is a startlingly direct account of a married couple’s situation in the most disturbing family tragedy possible.

The Beauty and the Beast (1987) is a cunning tale of incestuous relationship between a writer father and a 16-year old girl; Århus by Night (1989) a humour-gilded account of debut director’s first love and his problems with an experienced film crew; Facing the Truth (2002) a portrayal of director’s father, a former surgeon, who was one of the top brain surgeons in Denmark.

Collaborations

MSFF has been included in the Culture for Cities and Regions initiative. The project is Europe-wide and 70 regions and cities have been included in it.

Travel and accommodation

All accommodation possibilities in Sodankylä are listed at www.msfilmfestival.fi (click the Union Jack below the banner for information in English). When in Finland, Sodankylä can be easily reached by car, by train (www.vr.fi), by bus (www.matkahuolto.fi) or by plane (www.norwegian.com, www.finnair.com). Trains and planes stop at Rovaniemi, where Sodankylä can be reached.

Acknowledgements

Sodankylän kunta, SES, Lapin kulttuurirahasto, YLE, AVEK, Finland Festivals, Jenny ja Antti Wihurin rahasto, Kansallinen audiovisuaalinen arkisto, Laitila Wirvoitusjuomatehdas oy, Lapland Hotels, Euroopan komissio, Suomalais-tanskalainen kulttuurirahasto, Goethe-institut Finnland, Institut Francais Finlande, Kemijoki oy, Creative Europe Media.

Media accreditation and photos

Media accreditation ends on Friday 22nd of May 2015. Accreditation form can be filled and sent at the festival site at www.msff.fi. Remember to include your passport size photograph. Press photos of festival films and guests will be updated to press databank of www.msff.fi in early May. MSFF press agency will send you password to the databank.

Additional info:

Hippo Taatila
Press Secretary
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. / +358 41 721 38 44
Arkadiankatu 18 A 2, 00100 Helsinki
www.msfilmfestival.fi