06/01/2012

Ten years after his previous feature, Cyclomania (2001), Finnish director Simo Halinen has cast Peter Frankzén and Leea Klemola in his comeback feature, Pizza Desperata, which Liisa Penttilä will produce for Edith Film OY, with principal photography scheduled for this spring.

Halinen has himself written the script for the film about modern relationships: "There is no ready-made model for love; nothing can be taken for granted anymore. We have to draw the lines, and sometimes, when our hearts tell us to, cross them," said the director. The Finnish Film Foundation will contribute €500,000 to Pizza Desperata, which will be launched domestically next November by Future Film Oy Ab.

After six TV movies, Finnish director Matti Ijäs, who won his first Jussi - Finland's national film prize - 25 years go, is readying Things We Do for Love to shoot from March-July, with €680,000 production funding from the foundation.

Krista Kosonen, Sampo Sarkola, Tommi Korpela and Hannu-Pekka Björkman play the leads in the story of a shy man who falls in love with a woman whose ex-con ex-husband has come to town. "A genuine mess of all the things we do for love," will be filmed by Auli Mantila and Jussi Rantamäki for Elokuvayhtiö, in collaboration with Aamu (Sweden) and Pomor Films (Norway). Disney Nordic will release in Finland and Sweden, Filmforsyninga in Norway.

The Finnish Film Foundation will also back Finnish director Rax Rinnekangas' Water Mark, starring Hannu-Pekka Björkman, Nacho Angulo, Kalle Holmberg and Seela Sella, with €105,000. Rinnekangas will himself produce for Bad Taste Ltd, which will also handle local distribution.

Currently being shot, the film follows a Nordic, half-Jewish photographer arriving at Venice to both to take pictures and open his inner reality to his "mental brother", the late Russian poet Joseph Brodsky. During WW2 his father was an informer of Jews to the Nazis.