Joonas Neuvonen’s loose follow-up to his 2010 hit Reindeerspotting and raw portrait of drug addiction has sold 53,418 tickets in only three weeks in Finland via SF Studios.

The film is, so far, the 5th biggest grossing Finnish documentary ever after Tale of a Lake (187,185 admissions), The Finnish Flash — the Teemu Selanne Story about the national ice hockey champion (130,530), Tale of a Forest (90,544) and Neuvonen’s own hit Reindeerspotting-Escape from Santaland (63,654).

Lost Boys’ success is all the more impressive considering the film’s K-18/for adults only ratings, and screen capacity reductions due to the on-going pandemic.

The film directed by Neuvonen with Sadri Cetinkaya, was produced by Miia Haavisto for Helsinki filmi and Tekele Productions. 

Neuvonen's documentary is his own search for answers in South East Asia after his friend Jani (the drug addict and main protagonist of Reindeerspotting) is found dead in Phnom Penh and another friend of theirs, Antti has vanished. The director takes the audience into the squalid world of paid sex and hard drugs, and on his own soul-searching journey where there are no heroes.

Unlike Reindeerspotting that was filmed mostly with hand-held cameras, on a small budget, Lost Boys is more ambitious visually, and co-directed by Sadri Cetinkaya, who was editor and co-writer of Reindeerspotting.

“Needless to say how happy I am about the [B.O.] results for Lost Boys!”, Haavisto told nordicfilmandtvnews.com. “I have worked on the film for six years and Joonas Neuvonen and Sadri Cetinkayya for 10 years. At a certain point, we weren’t even sure if the film would ever be completed as it was such a high-risk project - dealing with hard drugs, sex trade in South East Asia, with the director himself being the protagonist,” she said. 

 According to Tekele’s junior producer Julia Elomäki, filming started in 2010 and continued until 2019, with a period of full stop when Neuvonen himself had to serve time in prison for drug crimes. “Lost Boys sucks you into the underworld of drugs from the first image, and I guess audiences are curious to watch this insider’s view of a world that is so hard to penetrate,” she said.

Haavisto continues: “The fact that Lost Boys - which tells the story of a tough lives and sheds light on the less heroic side of humanity - is of so much interest to cinema-goers is a sign that viewers are open-minded. They want different stories and perspectives on reality on the big screens. It encourages writers and producers to make more bold and meaningful films,” she said.