Kehittämö’s filmmakers 2024, from left to right: Ville Koskinen, August Joensalo, Joel Karppanen, Ida-Maria Olva and Pavel Andonov. Photo: Riitta Supperi.
Two of the project ideas selected are documentaries. Joel Karppanen’s Labour Day (Wacky Tie Films / Pasi Hakkio) examines the working class of today. Ville Koskinen’s Someone Gets Away Again (Polygraf / Sandra Enkvist) is an anthology film about the era of mass tourism and its impending end.
Of the fictional films, August Joensalo’s Imaginary Friends (Aamu Film Company / Emilia Haukka) is a story about Vihma who meets his childhood imaginary friend. In Pavel Andonov’s drama Flowers of Farewell (Made / Ilona Tolmunen), the Finnish-Bulgarian Boriana travels to Bulgaria to bury her mother, whom she never got to know.
Ida-Maria Olva’s A Year of Bees (Bufo / Pilvi Waltzer) blends elements of documentary to fiction, and tells the story of a beekeeper who is dedicated to saving the pollinators and refuses to accept the contradictions inherent in the ecology of beekeeping.
Kehittämö is unique in Finland
The Kehittämö programme, which was initiated last year, is the first development programme in Finland aimed at new creators in the audiovisual sectors. The five projects selected will each receive €55,000 to develop and carry out the project. Furthermore, each project will be provided with a tailor-made individual development plan and assigned an AV professional as a dedicated mentor.
“Kehittämö is a long-awaited programme in the Finnish audiovisual sector, because it provides support for the development efforts of filmmakers who are in early development phases,” says Emilia Haukka of Aamu Film Company, a producer of the film Imaginary Friends, which was selected for the programme.
“As a producer, concrete work with creators is the best way to find tools and a common language for developing their specific works and creatorship. It is a wonderful thing that the Kehittämö participants are director-producer pairs, since a relationship of trust and confidentiality between the creator and producer is one of the cornerstones of brave and multivoiced cinematic art.”
Through international mentoring, the filmmakers in the programme will also be able to expand their networks outside Finland, and their works will be better positioned to gain international visibility within the industry. This year, the Kehittämö mentors are script writing consulting partner Franz Rodenkirchen (The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki, The Woodcutter Story) and Francoise von Roy (Compartment No. 6, Stupid Young Heart, Family Time), Karol Griffiths who has worked with greats such as the Coen brothers, educator and producer Grant Keir (e.g. From Scotland with Love, Off the Rails) and Gitte Hansen, who is a specialist in the development, international financing forums and distribution of documentaries.
The aim of the programme is to create new, high-quality audiovisual works and also strengthen the personal voice of talented filmmakers. Over the course of the development period of roughly ten months, the ideas accepted for the programme will be refined into strong proposals that can succeed in the global competitive markets.
“Kehittämö’s first year was very successful. Film projects and creators found their own paths and forms of expression, which has already yielded good results in applying for further funding,” says Director of AVEK Ulla Simonen.
The Kehittämö Talent Development Lab programme is implemented by AVEK and made possible with the financial support of the Finnish Cultural Foundation, which will provide the audiovisual industry with almost one million euros in additional funding over a period of four years. The creators and works of the Kehittämö project will be presented at the Finnish Film Affair event in the autumn of 2024.
Additional information:
Ulla Simonen, Director, AVEK
ulla.simonen(at)avek.kopiosto.fi, +358 44 790 0344
