05/03/2025 - The Finnish producer explains she became more drawn to documentaries after working with artist films and "weird fiction"

Danai Anagnostou is a creative producer for film and artists' moving images, and a doctoral researcher in production studies. In 2019, she co-founded Kenno Filmi, a production company in Helsinki that hosts projects by international filmmakers, artists and researchers. She studies film collectives and their influence on contemporary conduct and strategies for producing films at Aalto University's Critical Cinema Lab. An interview with her, now selected for the 2025 Emerging Producers programme (read her EP profile here).

Why do you produce documentaries? Do you see documentary cinema as an instrument of social and political change?
Danai Anagnostou: Documentaries can highlight microhistories and connect seemingly unconnected knowledge, images, possibilities, and speculations in profound ways. Many documentary filmmakers and teams work with customized research methods, experimenting with narratives and the use of technology. Hence, the process of making the film itself can often be a driver for change – even if only on a small scale.

I became more drawn to documentaries after working with artist films and "weird fiction". After enrolling in a doctoral program, I began working more systematically with research and realized that what I wanted to do was a mixture of all these components.

How do you achieve and maintain work-life balance and foster overall well-being?
Every day is different, and I cannot say that I always work at a steady pace – especially since I run my own company while also working on an ongoing, practice-based research project. I often find myself engaged in work for most of the day. However, this is where agency and purpose come into play – I have the privilege of choosing the projects I take on, and the directors and teams with whom we share each producing adventure.

I see each film as a learning experience, and this mindset energizes me daily. After many years of managing my responsibilities and my timetable, I have learned to take breaks and slow down when needed. Finally, as I study and understand the cultural dynamics and institutional aspects of film production, I no longer over-identify with the industry itself.

Where do you find audiences for your films?
That is very case-specific. There are also many approaches to thinking about audiences, and they are all necessary. From a practical angle, the Finnish financing system requires a film to have confirmed professional domestic distribution before it is eligible for production support. Not every film can fit the broadcasters’ and cinema distributors’ slates and that gives the producer the possibility to design audience outreach holistically. I love watching films in full cinemas, but I also love watching films and video installations in community centers, art spaces, film clubs, outdoors, on planetarium domes, or in barns – you name it.

No matter what we plan, audiences find films and films find audiences in surprising places, formats, and occasions. They can be simultaneously local and global, no matter how niche the film is. There is a perception that festival selections determine a film’s success. However, I believe audience responses and engagement, screenings in unpredictable places, and the discussions the film generates outside the industry make a work impactful.

What projects do you have underway?
At the moment, we have finalized two short films that are seeking a festival premiere for 2025. Martta Tuomaala’s Am I Calling You at a Bad Time is an experimental documentary made with archival material and amateur footage. It is based on stories of customer service workers on the phone, narrated with a comedic tone, and is distributed by Raina Films.

Carmen Baltzar’s All the Love in My Body is a cross-section of a tourist beach in Greece from the perspective of two young Romani sisters. It is a fictional story based on true events and is co-produced with Homemade Films.

We are in the financing stage for two projects: Lucy Davis’ Biji Biji Buaya Crocodile Seeds, a medium-length film that blends documentary, fiction, and animation, containing stories, that are ‘drawn from the belly’ of a 19th-century taxidermy crocodile from a British colonial museum collection in Singapore. Sawandi Groskind’s Skarpabba will be his sophomore feature – loosely based on his maternal grandfather’s diaries, and spans from rural Ostrobothia in the 1960s to present-day Helsinki.

In the coming years, we will focus on feature films with directors we have already collaborated with on their shorts or debut features. We prioritize ongoing collaborations and long-term relationships, considering ways in which the directors can also support each other’s artistic and professional development within a community of filmmakers.

Mariangela Pluchino is writing her debut feature, a fantasy documentary, Novus Mundus – Old Promises, set in Venezuela. François Yazbeck is developing his sophomore essay documentary, a visceral, mythological tale titled Versets Sombres.

Martta Tuomaala is working on Stretching, a creative documentary that explores the conflict between physical appearances and socio-political realities through the work of personal trainers. Elena Näsänen is writing her debut fiction film, Elsa, a semi-autobiographical story set in Rome in the 1980s.

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EMERGING PRODUCERS is a leading promotional and educational project, which brings together talented European documentary film producers. The programme is organised and curated by the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival.

Deadline for applications to the EMERGING PRODUCERS 2026 edition is 31 March 2025.