08/04/2013 - The Finnish Film Foundation backs two features and two full-length documentaries, including Samuli Valkama's No Thank You

Finnish director Samuli Valkama (photo), who most recently filmed the romantic comedy, Love and Other Troubles, moves to comedy-drama comedy with No Thank You, an adaption of Finnish author Anna-Leena Härkönen’s best-selling novel, which Helsinki production outfit Kinotar will shoot this summer for a 2014 premiere.

No Thank You follows a 42-year-old woman, Heli, who is madly in love with her 43-year-old husband, but he never wants sex – “honey, not now”, and then he goes on playing computer games. Heli starts an affair with a young producer “to win time for her marriage”, but not everything goes according to plan.

The Finnish Film Foundation has supported the €1.3 million project by €630,000, and allocated another €500,000 for Finnish director Inari Niemi’s Kesäkaverit, which Bronson Club Productions will produce on a €3.2 million budget for Nordisk Film to launch next year. Niemi’s own screenplay deals with loyalty between women.

Every day three Finns commit suicide – a subject that people rarely want to talk about. Finnish directors Jukka Kärkkäinen and Sini Liimatainen try to explore the motives, earning signs and consequences in Once I Dreamt of Life, a €610,000 full-length documentary produced by Finland’s Mouka Filmi and Germany’s Alias Film, with €90,000 foundation subsidy.

Finnish director Joonas Berghåll received €175,000 for his €750,000 Mother's Wish [+see also:
trailer
interview: Joonas Berghäll
film profile], an unbroken chain of stories about motherhood – the presence or absence of a mother, and what it meant to the main characters - in different parts of the world. The film is co-produced by Oktober (Finland), Mantaray Film (Sweden) and Fridthjof Film (Denmark).