13/04/2012 - The Finnish Film Foundation backs four new films from veterans Halonen, Karukoski and newcomers Vartia and Äijö

As part of its new 50/50 scheme supporting feature productions that have already secured 50% of their finance, the Finnish Film Foundation has contributed €2.4 million to the funding of four new projects – two from veteran directors, two from newcomers.

What Finnish director Arto Halonen (pictured) has not factually revealed in his new drama documentary, When Heroes Lie, will become fiction in his A Patriotic Man, a €1.7 million Halonen-Igor A Nola production for Art Films and MP Film. Based on true events, the drama-comedy deals with ”use of illegal drugs in the sport of skiing in a society that demands heroes and needs to create champions at any cost”.

After Lapland Odyssey [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2010), Finnish director Dome Karukoski will direct Lion Heart from his own original screenplay, following a neo-nazi skinhead in his early forties who's trying to win the heart of his girlfriend’s ten-year-old boy who wants to get rid of him by any means. Shooting from August, the €1.5m feature will be backed by Helsinki Filmi Oy.

Rölli – Finnish actor-writer Allan Tuppurainen’s troll character originally developed for TV in the 1990s – will return in Rölli and the Golden Key, a €2.1 Marko Röhr-Matila Röhr Nordisk Film & TV AS (NO) production with the Film & Music Entertainment (F&ME) and Russia’s Contact Media Group. Finnish director Taavi Vartia will direct the children’s musical adventure (his first feature) about Rölli growing up.

No Land in Sight is the first feature by Finnish director Mark Äijo, to be produced by Äijö and Eerika Vermilä for Fremantle Media on a €0.5 million budget. The thriller follows a 21-year-young woman on a honeymoon cruise with her husband and closest friends; when some of them disappear, she realises it is pay-back time for a drug-related death in which she was once involved.