Helsinki's Film Festival Goes Hollywood, Marketing-Wise

The Helsinki International Film Festival, which runs Sept. 20-30, has plenty to celebrate on its 25th anniversary. HIFF, whose 55,000 visitors generate 70 percent of its 500,000-Euro budget, got its first funding ever from the Finnish Film Foundation. The FFF invests 27 million Euros a year in over 20 shorts, 30 docs, and 20 Finn features, including Finlands Oscar submission Purge, by Antti Jokinen, a highlight of HIFFs 185 films. It has been seen by 120,000 people, FFF head of production Petri Kemppinen tells The Hollywood Reporter huge for a nation of 5 million.

Isolated by geography and a language that strikes even fellow Scandinavians as bizarre, ruled by Sweden for 600 years and Russia for 100 (The Russian years were better, says Kemppinen), Finland has been overshadowed by higher-profile international hits from Denmark and Sweden. We have not been good about marketing, says fest director Pekka Lanerva. Lanerva says one reason Lars von Trier is better known than Aki Kaurismki, who broke around the same time, is that dazzling invention Dogme, which he calls a great artistic idea but also a successful marketing idea.

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With help from FFF and Favex (Finnish Film & Audiovisual Export, the other main player in Finnish film), Helsinki steps into the marketing spotlight by adding to this years festival its first-ever industry showcase, the Finnish Film Affair (Sept. 25-27), to which 30 buyers and film professionals were invited to watch 27 new Finnish films and 15 works in progress, in a program called "Laugh Scream Learn." We are not quite belonging to the club, says Kemppinen, But Finnish Film Affair could transform HIFF into a film market.

Industry players whove never been there before are sniffing around HIFF this time, hunting for hits. "There might be some projects floating around lonely which might be of interest," says Alexandra Emilia Kida of Trust Nordisk, which is hot this season thanks to films like Purge and two with rising star Mads Mikkelsen, Thomas Vinterbergs The Hunt and Swedens glossy Oscar submission A Royal Affair. Theres a huge appetite for films from this region, said NBCUniversal Pictures junior acquisition manager Amit Dey on HIFFs first-ever panel about film sales on Sept. 26, which featured eight sales, marketing, and distribution experts telling arthouse war stories and giving Finn filmmakers advice. Trust Nordisk in Toronto screened four or five films, and every single one was packed, because theres a thought among buyers that there will be a gem in there, and usually every 18 months there is.

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Why did Finland suddenly decide rather late, in April to put itself on the map? Now is really the moment, says Lanerva, because there are successes with different kinds of films. He predicts greater visibility for Kaurismki, Finlands sole Oscar nominee for 2002s The Man Without a Past and droll auteur of its 2011 Oscar submission Le Havre. (Kaurismki runs with his filmmaker brother Mika the Midnight Sun Film Festival in Finlands remote Lapland for 20,000 visitors). Aki has this ability to make movies that are commercially viable and artistically coherent. But Lanerva says Finland is not just about Kaurismkis anymore. They are international players, but it was very frustrating that they represent the whole country. We had to show more variety. HIFF 2012 film Iron Sky, a financially and technologically innovative mock epic about Nazis from the moon invading earth, was a big event, says Lanerva, and 2010s Rare Exports [about evil Santa and his killer dwarfs] was distributed quite widely in France. The game Angry Birds is going to be a movie. Not much Finnish characterization in that, but its going to be a big deal.

We have been seeing a second or even a third wave in Finnish film, says Kemppinen, I would say there is a quirkiness or absurdity in them. Its not very standard dramatization, thats for sure. One of our strengths is that were different from other Nordic countries.

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HIFF intends both to draw closer to Nordic neighbors and capitalize on its geographical and cultural difference, adding more films from neighboring Estonia, whose Taska Film coproduced Purge with Finlands Solar Films, and which is coincidentally celebrating the 100th anniversary of its film industry. This year they have like doubled the usual production of feature length documentaries, says Lanerva. Were going to expand to other Baltic countries a lot in the next few years.

Perhaps surprisingly, Finland also has plans to join forces with Russia. Russias dominance of Finland was called Finlandization. When THR asked Kemppinen and Lanerva whether their Russian plan constituted Finlandization in reverse, Kemppinen snorted and Lanerva delightedly said, Yeah, thats right! We have met with the St. Petersburg film festival several times in the last few months. They run at exactly the same time as us, and you dont need a visa, just take a boat and in the morning youre there. We are hoping to make our festival a gateway to Russian movies.

Lanerva thinks Russians need a marketing hand, because they try to sell world festivals on big action movies and comedies. That dont work at all. Its midlevel arthouse comedies that work outside of the country. Russia doesnt push arthouse works much. Lanerva plans to push Russian arthouse films along with Finnish, Estonian, and Baltic. We want to make our festival a gateway to Russian movies.

HIFF also means to be a gateway from Hollywood's marketing department to Finland's too self-effacing filmmakers . Finnish people are mostly quite shy, says Lanerva. Maybe the main thing Finns need to learn is to adopt a more brash and swaggering Hollywood attitude. Perhaps they could pump up their pride by blasting the brassy score to Finn director Renny Harlin's Die Hard 2 -- the Finnish national anthem.

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