”Warm movies from a cold land.”
Pohjola-filmi is a film production company that specializes in northern cinema. We make feature-length and short films, documentaries and fiction. What counts is not the form but the content: we want to say something important about this world and the people in it.
Pohjola-filmi was founded in 2009 by producer Elina Pohjola and screenwriter Mike Pohjola. The company is developing several film projects with several writers and directors.
Founders
Elina Pohjola (b.1981) studies film and tv-producing at the Aalto University of Art and Design. She’s worked in production for several Finnish feature films, the latest of these as Assistant Director for Paha Perhe (Bad Family). Elina’s speciality is Icelandic cinema. The production company Pohjola-filmi, recently founded by Elina and Mike Pohjola, is focused on northern cinema.
Elina Pohjola has graduated as a media producer in the Turku Arts Academy, and has a BA in Film Production at the Aalto University.
Mike Pohjola (b.1978) is an author, playwright and a game designer. He studies screenwriting at Aalto University of Art and Design. Mike is interested in roleplaying games, religions, politics, fantasy, and all things strange.
In addition to Pohjola-filmi, Mike is the co-founder of a Stockholm-based Emmy-winning company that’s focused on participatory and interactive media. Through The company P Mike has worked with the TV gurus Joss Whedon and Tim Kring.
Productions
The Forest of Babel
The Forest of Babel in an adventure film where three children try to save a reindeer fawn in Lapland.
Rauna-Aletta is a young Sami girl who needs help lifting a fallen tree. She enlists the help of Erdem and Ibai, two boys who speak only Kurdish and Basque. None of them share a common language, but miraculously they still understand each other perfectly. Through speaking and listening the children manage to work together, tie a rope around the tree, and release the reindeer fawn that was trapped under it.
There is a political aspect to the film, as all the children speak a European language that belongs to a people without a state. We feel Basque, Kurdish and Northern Sami, deserve recognition and respect just as much as the major European languages.
The project won the Prix Europa prize in the category Languages Through Lenses in 2010. See the film here.
Directors Elina and Mike Pohjola
Screenwriter Mike Pohjola
Cinematographer Juice Huhtala
Production Designer &
Wardrobe Designer Laura Haapakangas
Sound Designer Pekka Aikio
Editor Matti Näränen
Still photographer Raimo Korpela
Producer Elina Pohjola
Cast: Sarelle Porsanger (Rauna-Aletta), Mahdi Hajizadeh (Erdem), Alex Casanovas (Ibai), Eugenia Carratalá (Ibai’s mother)
About Marriage
The company’s first production was the romantic documentary About Marriage, a unique and rough movie about love. Elina and Mike are getting married even though they have opposed marriage. The makers talk about their feelings and the meaning of marriage. The interviews are peppered with dramatized parts where actors Samuli Vauramo and Pihla Viitala present the story of the main couple. In the end the viewer also wants to be in love. Trailer
In production
Sirocco
Short film, fiction
A lonely woman finds an abandoned baby by her apartment house’s garbage bin, and decides to take the baby home with her. Based on a short story by Tuuve Aro.
Script Mira Muikku, Mikko Kuparinen, Elina Pohjola
Director Mikko Kuparinen
Cinemathography Juice Huhtala
Sound Design Pekka Aikio
Editing Matti Näränen
Producer Elina Pohjola
Production fund: Finnish Film Foundation / Joona Louohivuori & AVEK / Timo Korhonen
TV-channel: YLE / Sari Volanen
Actors: Eeva Putro, Tuukka Martiskainen
Shoot 10-11/2011
The Godfather (working title)
Documentary film 60min
In Finland hundreds of men have a girlfriend or wife from Thailand. Everyone has an opinion when they see this kind of couple. For an outsider it’s easy to judge this kind of relationship. Love is bought. Our central character Seppo is a middle-aged man who has a girlfriend in Thailand. Seppo is director Wille Hyvönen’s uncle and godfather. Wille doesn’t approve of Seppo’s actions. For him these kinds of relationships are absurd.
Seppo has been in love with Poo, showing his feelings by buying gifts for thousands of Euros. Seppo believed that their love was real. Until Poo turned out to be a traitor. Now Seppo has a new love, Pin. This time it’s real, says Seppo. Why does a man once betrayed still believe in love? Is Pin’s love for real?
The clou of this film is the relationship and open conflict between the worldviews of director Wille Hyvönen and main character Seppo. How does thr godfather feel about Wille questioning the love of his life? How can Seppo explain his actions to his dear nephew who grew up in the 2000s? Why does Wille judge Seppo and Pin’s relationship, what is it that irritates him? Is Wille the one who should change? It’s time to let Seppo speak.
Written and directed by Wille Hyvönen
Dramaturgy John Webster
Cinemathography Jarmo Kiuru
Sound Design Pekka Aikio
Editing Matti Näränen
Producer Elina Pohjola
Production fund : Finnish Film Foundation / Elina Kivihalme & AVEK / Timo Korhonen
TV-channel: YLE / Erkki Astala
Shooting 04-06/2011
The Godfather is one of the projects selected for Twelve for the Future 2011/2012, a co-production workshop for young Nordic documentary producers and directors.
In development:
Last Day (working title)
Feature film
Last Day is a comedy where three fired industrial workers do everything they can to get their jobs back. The group’s leader Voima-Virtanen is a screw-up who looks for clues about illegal practices, but ends up taking the boss’s daughter hostage. His last resort is to extort the boss to give them a better severance package. Like everything else he tries, that too is doomed to horrible failure.
Script Mike Pohjola
Producers Elina Pohjola & Aleksi Bardy (co-production with Helsinki-filmi)
Development fund: Finnish Film Foundation / Jukka Asikainen
Contact information
Pohjola-filmi Oy
Kaasutehtaankatu 1, Rakennus 7
00540 Helsinki
pohjolafilmi@pohjolafilmi.fi
Elina Pohjola
CEO, Producer
elina.pohjola@pohjolafilmi.fi
+358-44-5031881
Mike Pohjola
Dramaturg
mike.pohjola@pohjolafilmi.fi
+358-50-5238399
Johanna Tarvainen
Production Manager
johanna.tarvainen@pohjolafilmi.fi
+358-44-5568297
Henrik Asplund
Production Assistant
henrik.asplund@pohjolafilmi.fi
+358-40-4629562