The founder of the leading Nordic private equity group CapMan is turning into a film mogul. After various investments in Finnish films and TV dramas in recent years such as Antti Jokinen’s Flowers of Evil, AJ Annila’s The Eternal Road, Aku Louhimies’ The Unknown Soldier, and the upcoming series Peacemaker on which he served as executive producer, Tolppanen has ventured into distribution in Finland with the newly created Aurora Studios (see separate story for details). He tells us about his vision.

What triggered your decision to launch Aurora Studios and what is your vision for the company?
Ari Tolppanen: I have been passionate about film since I saw Tarzan as a 4-year-old at the cinema. I have been involved in the film industry for a long time, and in many different capacities. In the 80’s we ran cinemas, imported and distributed movies. For a long-time I got ’side-tracked’ to the financial world, and now have been slowly coming back to my roots by investing in films and TV series over the last 5-6 years.

We felt it was time to start a sort of ‘mini studio’ in Finland, that will help develop and finance quality content and distribute it in Finland and the Nordic countries. We want to be an agile team of problem-solvers that provides a set of services in a very friendly and flexible way.

Our aim is to distribute theatrically 4-6 films a year, so we will put a lot of care and energy into the details of each release, such as understanding audience demographics and how to reach the people who want to see this particular movie. For both development and marketing purposes, we are creating tools that allow us to use data analytics from gearing content to targeting audience segments via dynamic campaigns.

What type of content do you want to bring to the screens? You’ve exec-produced a few landmark historical films including The Eternal Road and The Unknown Soldier - is epic historical content your favourite genre?
AT: It is one of my favourite genres, but in general I gravitate towards talent with a strong vision and passion for storytelling, regardless of the genre. I participated, for instance, also in Iron Sky, which isn’t exactly historical - unless we include the future!

We hope to enable creative visions and facilitate the work of producers by giving a hand to overcome the bottlenecks that often arise when putting together a film's financing. We do hope, of course, to establish ourselves as a well-liked and respected distributor known for bringing quality storytelling to delight and entertain large audiences.

Is your mid-term plan to expand Aurora Studios from distribution/co-financing to production or take stakes in production companies to secure talents and content?
AT: We will start by 'doing our homework' and honing our skills at domestic releases in Finland, and are negotiating with partners in Scandinavia to exploit the films and IP in the Nordic countries - but are definitely looking to grow organically or via acquisitions or mergers to expand that scope. As we will discuss slate deals with producers, we will also actively help them to develop their projects and can very well discuss to act as co-producers at least in the films based on books or other IP that we have optioned.