Jokkinen’s drama Purge adapted from Sofi Oksanen’s best-selling novel was the Finnish entry at this year’s Academy Awards. The film collected five Jussi awards, including Best Leading Actress (Laura Birn) and Supporting Actress (Liisi Tandefelt). The director’s new project is both the personal story of a man looking for atonement and redemption, and a detailed and realistic portrait of organized crime in Russia. In his Director’s statement, Jokinen says: “Unlike my previous films The Resident (2010) and Purge (2012), this film does not interweave in several plot lines. The Criminal follows one main character, Juhani Aho, as he tries to become part of society again and looking for atonement with his family. It’s a riveting drama with a very powerful lead character and extremely unique circumstances in Russian organised crime 2013”. The film will be set mainly in Finland and St Petersburg.
Production mogul Selin has two other projects scheduled to open late August/early September: the comedy Village People by former Nordic Talents winner Marja Pyykkö (Run Sister Run), about a small village in Northern Finland in turmoil as they wait for the visit of their beloved President Urho Kaleva Kekkonen, and Above Dark Waters, the directorial debut of actor Peter Franzén, based on his own best-selling coming-of age novel. Still in his production pipeline is the historical drama Mannerheim to be directed by Dome Karukoski.
Meanwhile Selin has set up a separate production house, Nummela Films, with his long-time director/partner Aleksi Mäkelä who has made some of Finland’s biggest local hits of the last decade for Solar Films such as Bad Boys (615,000 admissions in 2003) and Matti-Hell is for Heroes (462,000 admissions in 2006). “After 18 years Aleksi has decided to do something different. We felt it was important to support his desire to have more freedom do other things,” explains Selin. Nummela’s films will be released domestically by Nordisk Film, co-owner of Solar Films. The first film produced by Nummela’ is Mäkelä’s comedy Kummeli-Towards the Day of Doom-The Movie set to start filming this summer.