The Finnish documentary Finnish Blood, Swedish Heart by Mika Ronkainen (Freetime Machos) won the Dragon Award for Best Nordic Documentary in Gothenburg. The story of Kai Latvalehto (ex-rock musician in his 40s) who drives with his father from Oulu, Northern Finland to Gothenburg to revisit the places of his childhood, is also a moving portrait of second generation Swedish Finns. We spoke in Gothenburg to the director and main protagonist.
What was the starting point for the film?
Mika Ronkainen: It all started 20 years ago when Kai came to visit me at my house-warming party before I got married. He came with a singer and a present which was a fly agaric mushroom (i.e. poisonous). We immediately became friends. However we never spoke about his childhood. All I knew was that he had lived in Sweden before. He just didn't want to talk about it.
Kai Latvalehto: I didn't talk about it because I kept it under lock and key. At that time I was in my twenties, a young student, playing in a rock band. I thought I could mould my life into whatever I wanted; that perhaps my different background from my peers didn't really matter.
MR: Then five years ago Kai came to me and asked if I had noticed the wave of Finnish/Swedish musicians from his generation who have made it big in Sweden. I thought that was a good starting point for a film. Then he just opened up, telling me his own story. He cried a lot. There was a wound still open because of his double culture.
How did you have the idea for the road trip between Kai and his father?
MR: That was my idea. Initially I wanted to focus on the musicians, but after hearing Kai's story I thought it was much more interesting and I asked him to be the ‘main' character. To do the research, Kai and I decided to go to Sweden by train and his father took us to the railway station. The two were sitting in the front and I was listening to the father and son, nagging each other and telling jokes. You could tell they loved each other but there was tension because of the cultural and generational gap. That's where I developed the idea for the road trip. So we started shooting and the father offered to go to Gothenburg with us.
Besides the personal father and son story, search of identity and general look at second generation Swedish Finns, the film is also a musical where songs and especially lyrics play a central role. How did this idea come to your mind?
MR: We started to research music from first generation Finnish immigrants and found an old compilation from 1974 published by a very influential Finnish company called Love Records. The album was totally forgotten.
How did you select those musical interludes and insert them in the main storyline?
MR: The film has a true historical dimension, dealing with an important wave of immigration, half a million people - moved from Finland to Sweden in the late 1960s-early 1970s, (because of unemployment). We needed to tell that somehow and at the same time keep the emotion in the film. I tried to avoid as much as I could the voice over, then we thought that the music could give the background for the story in a different way.
The road trip turns into a cathartic experience for the father and son who discuss painful subjects such as alcoholism, neglect, and family secrets. How did you select those intimate moments?
MR: They drove around 40 hours, and with three cameras constantly filming them, you were sure to catch some special moments on tape. Once every hour, I had to switch the memory cards and would take advantage of this break to suggest certain topics for them to discuss. Otherwise the conversation was totally natural.
What's the plan for the film now?
MR: It will come out in Sweden on March 22, then in Finland two weeks later. We are going to arrange a tour in Finland with the band, just before the theatrical release.
Written by Annika Pham