Two Nordic films, two enclosed island worlds and two very different forms of captivity entered into dialogue during the Film Talk “Nordic Directors of the CineCoPro Conference”, hosted by the Munich Film Festival and moderated by Cineuropa’s Davide Abbatescianni. The conversation brought together Finland's Alli Haapasalo, director of Tell Everyone, and Denmark's Christian Bonke, helmer of Hercules Falling, to discuss research, vulnerability, working with actors and the current state of Nordic film production.

Haapasalo introduced Tell Everyone as a story set in Finland in 1898 and revolving around a woman called Amanda Aaltonen who is sent to Seili, which is an asylum island for women considered “unfit for society”. Some of these women were dealing with mental illness, others were neuroatypical, poor, rebellious or simply unwilling to conform to the roles imposed on them. Amanda, Haapasalo explained, is “a rebellious woman” who “refuses to surrender to authority” and “believes very stubbornly in the equality of all people”.

The film is based on a book by Katja Kallio, who approached Haapasalo with the idea of adapting it for the screen. It wasn’t just Amanda’s fate which immediately drew the director in, it was the wider community of women around her. “I call these ancient women’s stories,” she said, referring to stories of rape, infanticide, depression, poverty and social exclusion which have all too often been dismissed as marginal. The project became increasingly urgent as Haapasalo understood just how current its central concerns still were. “It’s about the place given to women,” she explained, describing the narrow framework within which women are still expected to behave: “You have to have a voice, but not be too loud.”

She also underlined the film’s connection to women’s health, an area she described as still marked by “an enormous black hole” in medical knowledge. At the time, Amanda’s condition, PMDD, would simply have been taken for madness. For Haapasalo, therefore, the film is also about lives shaped by a lack of understanding: “We’re putting them in an asylum rather than trying to understand them.”

Bonke traced Hercules Falling back to a personal crisis. He revealed that, seven years ago, he experienced “deep depression”, after which he began reflecting on aggression, isolation and the ways men deal with crisis. “I see myself as a highly sensitive, modern guy,” he said, “but how do the more stereotypical macho men in society deal with crisis when they’re hit by it?” This led him to think about veterans, whom he initially saw as “the archetypal males of our society”.

One decisive encounter came during a veterans’ parade in Copenhagen. Bonke followed a group to a bar, approached “the most frightening-looking guy” and was invited to his apartment the following week. That man’s story changed the course of the entire project. “He’d risked his life in numerous deployments for Denmark and now he was left sitting in his apartment struggling all by himself with PTSD, which society wouldn’t even recognise,” Bonke stressed. From that moment on, he’d felt there was “a story that needed to be told”.

Both directors used places as the entry points for their films. For Bonke, a rehabilitation centre on a remote Danish island became “the arena for the film”: beautiful natural surrounds set against the dark backdrop of war experiences and damaged men. The setting functioned as “a laboratory” in which to study them. For Haapasalo, the paradox of Seili was crucial. Rather than a gloomy asylum, the real-life island is beautiful. “They’re basically imprisoned in paradise,” she explained. The challenge was to balance the beauty of the environment with the structural misogyny of the institution.

That balance led her to develop a spatial dramaturgy based on zones: Amanda’s cell, the hospital interiors, the courtyard, the forest, and finally the cliffs and horizon, representing the unattainable outside world. This structure helped determine camera placement and emotional intimacy. “Where to put the camera is always the biggest question,” she noted.

Next, the conversation focused on working with actors and non-professionals. Bonke’s film features real-life veterans, many of them playing versions of themselves, and his method was deliberately open. “The more forcibly you direct them, the less benefits it brings,” he explained. Instead, he would ask them how they would normally behave in a given situation, building the scene based on their own instincts and language. The process also raised ethical concerns: some funders withdrew because they were unsure whether such vulnerable participants could be properly protected on a film set. Bonke said the team took extensive precautions, talking through boundaries with all their participants and debriefing after every day of shooting.

Haapasalo’s process was different, as she worked with professional actors, but trust remained central. “It’s never about pushing,” she said. “Everybody’s always giving everything.” For her, the work depends on presence, instinct and honesty. “When I say it was great, I never lie about it,” she stressed. “Presence is everything. Just being there.”

Asked about the wider state of Nordic cinema, both directors called for greater courage from funding systems. Haapasalo argued that Finland is “not the greatest risk-taker”, warning that too many projects become trapped in development or emerge as “lukewarm films” after being overworked. Bonke noted a similar issue in Denmark, where long funding processes can make filmmakers nervous and encourage them to tweak projects to gain approval. Still, he argued that cinema is finding renewed strength precisely because it can tackle urgent subjects more directly than polished streaming series. “Cinema-released films have to break through the barrier,” he concluded, “and bring certain vital issues to the fore.”