20/06/2016 - Award-winning Finnish director Klaus Härö's next movie will be a historical drama, which will be supported by the Finnish Film Foundation

Finnish director Klaus Härö, whose latest feature, The Fencer [+see also:
trailer
interview: Ivo Felt
film profile], was this year nominated for a Golden Globe and awarded two Jussis, Finland’s national film prize, including Best Film, will shortly start King of Finland, a story based on the abortive attempt to set up a monarchy in the country after it gained independence from Russia.

Produced by Rimbo Salomaa, Jukka Helle and Markus Selin, for Solar Films, Germany’s Daniel Zuta (Daniel Zuta Filmproduktion) and Finnish pubcaster YLE, the Anna Heinämaa-scripted feature is one of four new productions that the Finnish Film Foundation co-funded by €2.4 million on Friday 17 June.

The efforts start when an ambitious, young Finnish lawyer named Ilmari Kaski is assigned to a delegation on its way to Berlin to persuade German Kaiser Wilhelm II to let his son, Prince Oscar, become the future King of Finland. However, the Kaiser refuses and suggests his brother-in-law, Friedrich Karl, for the position, but the Finns are not happy with the idea.

Kaski is sent to his castle to keep him company, until they have found the courage to turn him down, but they change their minds: as Germany starts losing World War I, they do want Friedrich Karl as their sovereign after all. He refuses, but Kaski, who has become his friend, tries to persuade him. Nordisk Film will premiere the film in the autumn of 2017.

After The Good Son [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2011), Finnish director Zaida Bergroth will return to the big screen with Miami [+see also:
trailer
film profile], following two sisters who unexpectedly find each other after years of not knowing of each other's existence – with dangerous consequences. Scripted by Bergroth and Jan Forsström, the film will be produced by Miia Haavisto, for Helsinki Filmi, and by YLE, for an autumn 2017 release.

A male journalist is left with his sniffling, newborn baby in front of the maternity hospital – and a whole new life – when his wife decides she has had it, in Finnish director Marja Pyykkö’s comedy Man and a Baby [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which Jukka Helle and Markus Selin will produce for Solar Films. Marko Leino and Marja Pyykkö scripted Eve Hietamies’ story, and Nordisk Film will launch the result in autumn 2017.

Lastly, in Finnish director Joona Tena’s children’s movie Hyper Hamster, 11-year-old Emilia thinks she is just an ordinary, boring girl next door in a Helsinki suburb, until her pet hamster bites her finger and she is told she is going to become a “hyper hamster”. Paula Noronen wrote the script, which Marko Talli will stage for Yellow Film & TV and YLE; SF Studios has scheduled the release for autumn 2017.