Siiri Halko who collaborated on the short film series Zone B with Juho Kuosmanen and Where to Land’s Sawandi Groskind have been selected for the ‘Kehittämö’ programme.
The new ‘Kehittämö’ Talent Development lab backed by AVEK (the Promotion Centre for Audiovisual Culture) and the Finnish Cultural Foundation, has just inaugurated its ground-breaking training scheme March 17, with five promising new filmmaking voices: Rabbe Sandström, Katri Myllyniemi who are both working on documentary films, and Siiri Halko, Elisa Kujala and Sawandi Groskind, selected with their debut fiction works.
Under the Kehittämö scheme - the first of its kind in Finland - set up to strengthen the personal voices of promising filmmakers, each project will receive €55,000 in development, plus an invite to a six month intensive training lab.
As announced earlier - see our story - Finland gets first development scheme for new filmmakers - the five mentors offering their support during this programme include script guru Karol Griffiths who worked with the Coen brothers, script consultants Franz Rodenkirchen (The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki) and Françoise von Roy (Compartment No6), producer Madeleine Ekman (The Here After), documentary expert Gitte Hansen and producer/trainer Grant Keir (From Scotland With Love).
Ulla Simonen, AVEK director said more experts will be provided from other fields of expertise if needed.
”As a former producer, I know that this is a project that has been much needed in Finland,” she said. “In the past, Finnish filmmakers had to go on paid international development programmes. Now we can finally offer a similar service in Finland – and with the added bonus that the projects selected for the programme receive financial support for their development in addition to mentoring.”
Through the Kehittämö programme, Finnish filmmakers will receive almost one million euros in additional funding over a period of four years.
The five selected projects were selected based on the directors’ earlier works, their motivation, and the director-writer-producer team.
The five projects selected are the following:
For further information, check: www.kopiosto.fi/avek