14/07/2015 - Finnish director Aku Louhimies is directing a TV drama about the 1916 Irish Rebellion, in addition to preparing his first English-language feature, Clearance

“Thank God for the direct flights between Helsinki and Dublin,” said Finnish writer-director Aku Louhimies.  After eight local features – two of them, Frozen Land (2005) and Frozen City [+see also:
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interview: Aku Louhimies
interview: Markus Selin
film profile] (2006), having won a Jussi, Finland’s national film prize – he is currently directing Rebellion, a historical TV series about Ireland’s 1916 Easter Rebellion, which will be aired by RTÉ One next year, 100 years after the event.

“The violent birth of modern Ireland,” as seen from the perspective of a group of Dubliners during three weeks of the uprising, the five-part Rebellion is being produced for Ireland’s RTÉ Television, with a cast including Michelle Fairley (Game of Thrones), Brian Gleeson, Charlie Murphy and Sarah Greene.

“The series begins in 1914. Europe is at war, and Britain is preoccupied with the German threat. But by 1916 in Dublin, the Easter Rising explodes into life and announces the beginning of a campaign for independence that will take another seven years to resolve. However, it is a drama, not a history lesson.

“Rebellion will tell personal stories intertwined with political events of the time – of men, women and children from Belfast, Dublin and London. People whose lives were irrevocably changed by this period,” explained Jane Gogan, head of RTÉ Drama, about the Zodiak Media Ireland-Touchpaper Television-Element Pictures production.

Louhimies is also preparing his first English-language feature, Clearance, which the US-UK-French-Belgian Umedia Group announced at this year’s Cannes Festival. British actors Richard Armitage and Naomie Harris will star as a hardened mine-clearance expert and his pregnant partner, who are kidnapped in South Sudan; the action movie is due to shoot in South Africa from November.