10/03/2025 - Veli Granö’s sometimes funny, sometimes devastating documentary unearths one weird story after another

Circus Tuomento, freshly rewarded at Tampere - where it received the Main Award for films over 30 minutes long, ex aequo with Two Forests, as well as the Church Media Foundation Prize - is really three films rolled into one, and director Veli Granö knows this full well. “A film about a writer’s ruin and his son who built his own town, a town where dreams come to life,” it’s announced at the very beginning. To which this writer would also add: “And his son, the famous Finnish tightrope walker, who built it mostly in the nude.”

It’s a Finnish documentary, so the naked part, even while mowing the lawn, shouldn’t be all that surprising. But Circus Tuomento tells a surprising story – so odd that it’s of the too-strange-not-to-be-true variety. There’s late, failed writer Matti Tuomento, deciding he “shall be great. Greater, perhaps, than Simenon and Dumas” – the problem is that nobody else agreed. There’s his son Antti, who, after a lifetime of hurt, became a tightrope walker. “I experienced every form of violence, but I always tried to lighten the mood, which probably explains why I became a performance artist,” he says. And then there’s this damned town.

Years ago, Antti tried to improve his family’s life. “This is the next step: trying to better the world.” What he comes up with is like a makeshift version of Parc Güell or Niki de Saint Phalle’s Tarot Garden: Antti’s “town” features a statue of Nefertiti, made out of cans, and a Consulate of Ancient Civilisations, he announces proudly to his two visitors. He seems feeble yet keeps on looking for joy. Once the actual film crew shows up, deciding to use it for the children’s comedy Herman the Clown, it’s like watching someone’s wildest dream coming to life. It’s Field of Dreams all over again. He built it: they came.

There would be plenty to unpack even without all of these odd elements or grainy videos documenting Antti’s past tightrope adventures. Granö entertains, but his focus is clear: this is a story of trauma. Of violence perpetuated generation after generation, of frustration and disappointment that make someone belittle everyone around him, even his own children. Antti’s father is long gone, but not forgotten, and neither are his methods of torture. “When he wrote, he wanted to be left alone. He solved that problem by building a cabin for me and my brothers. The rest, my mother included, lived in the barn or the attic.” Also during the cold Finnish winters.

It’s a low-budget film, clearly, and some of the reenactments don’t work, but it is effective. The voice of this haunted man is still loud and clear, screaming from diaries and notes scattered all over the place. “Publish or be destroyed,” one of them says. It should say: “Publish or destroy those closest to you.” But maybe the vicious cycle has finally run out of steam. His father’s reaction to rejection was demolition – Antti creates things instead and smiles at their rusty edges.

This doc works as a story about obsession, with Matti so dedicated to his now-lost novels that they devoured him alive. It works as a story about his son escaping by choosing the oddest profession imaginable, finding happiness by walking over people’s heads or over thunderous rivers, stopping just to sip tea on a tightrope or paint. Finally, it works when talking about the inability to truly escape without finding acceptance. It might be three stories rolled into one, as mentioned, but it just works.

Coming up is a line that’s hated by documentary filmmakers, and for good reason, but this writer would be curious to see this work also as a fiction film, getting the same kind of treatment as, say, Poland’s The Last Family [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Dawid Ogrodnik
film profile], about an equally eccentric father and son. It’s not to diminish documentary as a form of storytelling, but rather to acknowledge that Granö has done a good job: he is showing so much, and yet you still want to see more.

Circus Tuomento was produced by Finland’s Filemo Films.