Exclusive: Selected at Cannes’ official competition for his short film All Inclusive, Finnish director Teemu Nikki starts filming May 9 a new comedy drama about intolerance.

All Inclusive is Nikki’s 15th short film but the first to enter Cannes’ prestigious Palme d’or competition, where another 10 shorts were picked from 4,240 entries.

The film is produced by Jani Pösö, Nikki’s co-partner in It’s Alive Films and co-writer of most of his films.

“Cannes is the cherry on top for It’s Alive Films. We’ve dreamt of this for a while,” said Nikki.

The film tells of Kalervo (Santtu Karvonen), a man who has never known how to stand up for himself. Not until Annukka (Hannamaija Nikander), the woman who loves him, gives him a present that will change everything. It is a story about power, love and change. “Like most of our works, All Inclusive uses comedy or dark humour to deal with important issues,” says Pösö.

After the feature length film Euthanizer - a darkly and disturbing tale of an animal euthanizer with a big heart-which won Best Script in Tokyo and was nominated for the Nordic Council Film Prize 2018, Nikki and Pösö are ready to shoot Nimby (for Not in My Back Yard) a comedy about the intolerance of tolerant people.

Mervi (19) travels to her hometown, a little village in Finland, with her girlfriend Kata, of Iranian origin, to confront her parents and come out of the closet. Things don't go as planned when Mervi finds her parents having an orgy with her godparents. At the same time, Kata's parents from Hamburg and Mervi's old boyfriend Mika with his neo-Nazi gang, find their way to the party. Soon a group of people who can't tolerate different sexuality, skin colour, religion, politics or even language is trapped in Mervi ́s childhood home.

“It is a comedy take on the hipster intolerance,” tells Pösö to nordicfilmandtvnews.com. “The film uses comedy to illustrate the fact that it is really easy to be tolerant if something is far away. But if it is near you, it is an entirely different thing. How tolerant is each of us really? How do we react to racism, to intolerance when we get in touch with it? Do people come closer together? Or do they split into groups and work against each other? How fast can trust turn into distrust? All of this is covered in the film a nice black humour.”

In the title roles are newcomer Susanna Pukkila, Almila Bagriacik, as well as Elias Westerberg (The Other Side of Hope, The Unknown Soldier), Matti Onnismaa (Euthanizer), Mari Rantasila (Absolution, Lovemilla), Antti Reini (Cold Courage, Liberty), Hannamaija Nikander (Euthanizer, All Inclusive), Leila Abdullah (De Pfeerkörner, The Harmonica) and Stephan Schad (Morden im Norden – Falsche Dosis).

Nimby will be shot in the city of Forssa in the heart of Southern Finland and will be the first feature supported by the Forssa Film Office. The co-production with Germany’s Bon Voyage Films, received co-financing from DR, Yle and support from the Finnish Film Foundation. Scanbox handles the domestic release.

The €1.3m film is fully-financed but Pösö said he’s in negotiations with partners from Sweden to widen the production potential. Delivery is set for 2020.