ONCE UPON A TIME IN A FOREST
Finland 2024
93 minutes
directed by: Virpi Suutari
One of the most important European authors, one of the pioneers of modern documentary, Virpi Suutari creates a film in her own unique style, creating scenes in which we perceive reality as dreamlike and surreal. But this time she contrasts it with directly captured scenes of events of dynamic actions of young dedicated fighters for nature conservation.
Finnish forests, together with Swedish ones, are the lungs of Europe. Now the ominous shadow of over-logging due to newly proclaimed development and profit is looming over them. The celebrated director decides to join the young Finnish environmental activists who are fighting to protect beauty and life against the worrying ideas of politicians and reckless aspirations of corporations. She creates extremely poetic scenes of the forest where we meet the main characters, Minka and Ida, gentle and compassionate, uncompromising and combative! Together with a group of comrades, they reveal to us how to enjoy the touch of plants, encounter with birds, surrender to primal clean waters. Loud monstrous machines and huge trucks mercilessly invade those spaces of untouched nature, heralding devastation of immeasurable proportions. In exciting cinematic collisions of beauty and drama, this film raises some of the most important questions of the modern world - how to preserve nature and save the planet? Virpi Suutari devotedly follows her heroines who bravely, without hesitation, oppose ever-superior opponents and the police. The struggle continues again and again with activists aware that the fate of their generation will be determined by their commitment to nature. The film pulsates brilliantly with an exciting rhythm of alternating actions and constant reminders of the immeasurable values for which our heroines give up a simple and safe existence and raise their voices with concern and pride!
The exquisite work of a true master of documentary film-making as an important cinematic experience that alerts us and invites us to join in!
Born in Kajaani, Finland in 1967. She is an award-winning filmmaker known for her personal cinematic style challenging the boundaries between fact and fiction. Her films have been shown at the major festivals such as IDFA, Locarno, Leipzig, Vision du Réel and Gothenburg Film festival. Retrospectives of her films were, among others, in Aarhus (Denmark), Rennes (France), Linz (Austria) and at the Festival in Tampere (Finland). She has received three times the Jussi-Award, Finnish national film award. She is also the member of the European Film Academy.
