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Arto Halonen directs from a script by Ossi Hakala.

REinvent International Sales has boarded international sales for the forthcoming sci-fi drama After Us, The Flood.

Arto Halonen directs from a script by Ossi Hakala. Halonen also produces for Art Films Production.

The film is set in 2060, when humanity stands at the brink of extinction because of global warming. Henrik, an old physicist, invented a formula in his youth that led to the creation of a stable fusion reactor. Instead of sharing it with the world, he sold it to a corporation that didn’t stop global warming. But now he...

A trio of teens navigates relationships in contemporary Helsinki in Girl Picture, Finland’s entry for the Best International Feature Oscar. Directed by Alli Haapasalo (Love and Fury), it’s an engaging portrait of young women that’s as refreshing as it is entertaining. To call this a “Finnish Booksmart” would be doing its originality a disservice, but there are coincidental similarities as a quick-witted lesbian and her straight girl friend try to help each other with their love lives over a series of parties and amusing encounters.

Mimmi (Aamu Milonoff) is sparky, rebellious and fun, lending her extroversion to Rönkkö (Eleonoora Kauhanen), who’s insecure about her sex life. But instead of the usual boy problems, her worry is that she may not actually enjoy sex at all. It strikes you how rarely the issue of asexuality is tackled on screen, as Rönkkö wonders if she’s doing something wrong,...

Cropped out of “Girl Picture” are the angsty awkwardness and crippling self-doubt that usually plague cinema’s teens as the training wheels of adolescence are removed. In a way, that makes director Alli Haapasalo’s up-tempo light drama a refreshing spin on a familiar genre, as it presents an attractively bouncy, perhaps even aspirational portrait of not-terribly-painful Gen-z growing pains. But as much as the trio make for pleasant company as they navigate a benevolent passage into adulthood, Ilona Ahti and Daniela Hakulinen’s screenplay never really grips; it’s hard to generate much real tension with characters one never truly worries about, who are going to be able to solve most of their problems with a quick heart-to-heart or an oversized-knitwear hug.

A likable portrait of three young Finns chasing down their sexual and romantic awakenings with an emotional frankness that would be enviable in women twice their age,...

Girl Picture Strand Releasing Reviewed for Shockya.com by Abe Friedtanzer Director: Alli Haapasalo Writer: Ilona Ahti & Daniela Hakulinen Cast: Aamu Milonoff, Eleonoora Kauhanen, Linnea Leino Screened at: Critics’ link, LA, 11/5/22 Opens: April 14th, 2022 (Finland) Society isn’t typically kind to those who are different, but there are also those who single themselves out […]

The post Girl Picture Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

Three young women in Helsinki explore their sexuality in Alli Haapasalo’s live-wire coming-of-age tale

Affairs of the heart – as well as the rest of the body – are the subject of this live-wire movie from Finnish director Alli Haapasalo, a triple-portrait of three young women in Helsinki who are looking for love or who find love looking for them. It’s a film that looks at the new possibility of sexuality, including, maybe, asexuality – the new frontier in sexual politics.

Aamu Milonoff is Mimmi: yearningly disgruntled with life and certainly with life at school where she gets into a scrap with another girl. Her friend Rönkkö (Eleonoora Kauhanen) works weekends with Mimmi at the smoothie bar at the mall, where a certain sweetly shy guy is hanging around, asking Rönkkö for a date. As for Mimmi herself, she has a coup de foudre at a party when she meets...

17 year old friends Mimmi (Aamu Milonoff) and Rönkkö (Eleonoora Kauhanen) are pretty typical teenage girls, dealing with the boredom of Finland’s long winters nights and with the normal travails of relationships. Across three Fridays and a Saturday, Mimmi develops a relationship with championship skater Emma and Rönkkö tries to find someone who can help her enjoy sex.

I watch a lot of coming of age movies, and I would bet that director Alli Haapasalo and writers Ilona Ahti and Daniela Hakulinen do as well, because Girls Girls Girls (which has also been released under the English title Girl Picture) is very reminiscent of a lot of genre pieces that have gone before it. In particular the influences of Sciamma and Moodysson loom large. These are good places to be pulling from, and the film spins variations on familiar moments well enough that it doesn’t become entirely a patchwork...

Keep track of all the submissions for best international feature at the 2023 Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2023 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

Scroll down for profiles of each Oscar entry

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between January 1, 2022 and November 30, 2022. The deadline for submissions to the Academy is October 3, 2022.

A shortlist of 15 finalists is...

Keep track of all the submissions for best international feature at the 2023 Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2023 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

Scroll down for profiles of each Oscar entry

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between January 1, 2022 and November 30, 2022. The deadline for submissions to the Academy is October 3, 2022.

A shortlist of 15 finalists is...

Keep track of all the submissions for best international feature at the 2023 Academy Awards.

Entries for the 2023 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.

Scroll down for profiles of each Oscar entry

An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.

Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between January 1, 2022 and November 30, 2022. The deadline for submissions to the Academy is October 3, 2022.

A shortlist of 15 finalists is...

Vertigo Releasing has shared the UK and Irish trailer for ‘Girls Girls Girls’ (formerly Girl Picture), to be released in cinemas on 30th September 2022.

The film is Alli Haapasalo’s candid, spirited drama following a trio of Finnish teens exploring desire and first love. The film is her second feature, following her debut Love and Fury.

Starring Aamu Milonoff, Eleonoora Kauhanen, Linnea Leino, the film follows Mimmi, Emma and Rönkkö three girls at the cusp of womanhood, trying to draw their own contours. Over three consecutive Fridays, two of them experience the earth moving effects of falling in love, while the third goes on a quest to find something she’s never experienced before…pleasure.

Also in trailers – Exclusive: Trailer & poster for ‘It Is In Us All’ starring Cosmo Jarvis

The post ‘Girls Girls Girls’ Trailer Trailer Trailer appeared first on HeyUGuys.

Girl Picture, the sophomore feature from Finnish director Alli Haapasalo, ditches hokey coming of age conventions while preserving the crushing emotional weight inherent to being a teenage girl. The film’s protagonists—best friends Mimmi (Aamu Milonoff) and Rönkkö (Eleonoora Kauhanen), alongside Mimmi’s lover Emma (Linnea Leino)—navigate the threshold of impending adulthood, oscillating wildly between manic self-centeredness and graceful altruism, encapsulating the disparate emotional poles one must traverse to arrive at self-actualized adulthood. What truly sets Girl Picture apart from the otherwise cloyingly twee coming of age landscape is its depiction of teenage sexual awakenings as something that can be natural, pleasurable […]

The post “By No Means a Film Against Boys”: Alli Haapasalo on Girl Picture first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Everything that matters happens on a Friday night. Not a bright and early Monday morning; not a lazy Sunday afternoon. It’s all about Friday, or so says “Girl Picture,’ at least, in its teenage coming-of-age triptych.

Set across three Fridays featuring the same three adolescent girls, “Girl Picture” is a thoughtful, funny, and empathetic look at lives in flux.

At the center of the film are free-spirited Mimmi (Aamu Milonoff) and loyal Rönkkö (Eleonoora Kauhanen), best friends who also work together after school at their mall’s smoothie stand. There, they dish and waste time. They’re teenagers, the brink of their life approaching with great swiftness. None of these girls is all too focused on her studies but rather on the romance and tumult and sex that comes with adolescence.

Also Read:

‘Hatching’ Film Review: Finnish Horror Unleashes a Teenage Girl’s Rebelliously Monstrous Side

At the smoothie stand,...

Girl Picture Trailer — Alli Haapasalo‘s Girl Picture / Tytot Tytot Tytot (2022) movie trailer has been released by Strand Releasing. The Girl Picture trailer stars Aamu Milonoff, Eleonoora Kauhanen, and Linnea Leino. Crew The screenplay is written by Ilona Ahti and Daniela Hakulinen. Poster Girl Picture Movie Poster Plot Synopsis Girl Picture‘s plot synopsis: “Best friends Mimmi and Rönkkö [...]

Continue reading: Girl Picture (2022) Movie Trailer: Aamu Milonoff & Linnea Leino star in Alli Haapasalo’s Young Love Film...

"I want to be so close to someone that it's not enough that your skin touches." Strand has revealed a new official US trailer for the indie film Girl Picture, a Finnish coming-of-age dramedy from filmmaker Alli Haapasalo. This first premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, and also played at Berlinale. The Finnish title is Tytöt Tytöt Tytöt which translates directly to Girls Girl Girls. Best friends Mimmi and Rönkkö work after school at a food court smoothie kiosk, swapping stories of their frustrations and expectations regarding love and sex. "Writers Daniela Hakulinen & Ilona Ahti consistently present the film's teen protagonists as complex individuals, while director Alli Haapasalo, rather than aestheticizing the girls' femininity, vibrantly depicts their trials and tribulations through their own eyes." This stars Aamu Milonoff, Eleonoora Kauhanen, and Linnea Leino. I wrote about this one last year as one of the great Finnish films at Sundance,...

In a world which is constantly telling girls how to behave and who to be, Alli Haapasalo’s Sundance hit comes as a breath of fresh air. Later screened at Inside Out, it’s the story of three young women navigating the challenges of early adulthood, and it manages to combine a focus on sex and sexuality with an innate wholesomeness which makes it effortlessly endearing. These are lives lived naturally, setting aside the pressures and prejudices of the wider world, in a space where men are peripheral. They’re still fraught with problems, but, like Mariano Biasin’s Sublime, another of this year’s festival favourites, they provide a glimpse into a world of freedom.

Emma (Linnea Leino) is a figure skater in training, committed to the sort of regime which might not seem like freedom, but she’s doing something she genuinely loves and she seems to have good people around her.

Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Ilkka Saastamoinen. Girl Picture Review — Girl Picture (2022) Film Review from the 45th Annual Sundance Film Festival, a movie directed by Alli Haapasalo, starring Aamu Milonoff, Eleonoora Kauhanen, Linnea Leino, Oona Airola, Mikko Kauppila, Elias Westerberg, Oksana Lommi, Jantsu Puumalainen, and Henrikki Haavisto. The [...]

Continue reading: Film Review: Girl Picture: The Complexities of Adolescence Shine Through an Otherwise Typical Teen Drama [Sundance 2022]...

The title of “Girl Picture,” the Finnish director Alli Haapasalo’s winsome coming-of-age film, is straightforward in a deliberate kind of way. It seems to say: . The movie, which premiered in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at Sundance, sticks to this promise as it unravels a conventional yet enormously likable story of three teenagers in Finland working out their feelings about love and sex.

We meet Mimmi (Aamu Milonoff), a sneering hothead, as she’s picking a fight with a fellow student in gym class. Her surliness is so off-putting that she might be a loner if it weren’t for her longtime best friend, Rönkkö (Eleonoora Kauhanen), whose quirky intellect balances out Mimmi’s quick wit and bad temper. Whether at school or at the smoothie shop in the mall where they work, the pair are nearly inseparable. But while Mimmi could stand to cool off, Rönkko...

Chicago – The 2022 Sundance Film Festival is on Day Nine, and will be announcing their top film honorees on January 28th. The festival is wrapping up as virtual/online, meaning anyone/anywhere with a ticket or a pass (link) can indulge in the film offerings and events throughout the festival, which runs until January 30th.

One of the highlight offerings is free to anyone, with no need for extra tickets or credentials. Beyond Film programming offers something for everyone … with filmmaker chats, meet-ups and a daily talk show with Festival Director Tabitha Jackson. Festivals stars and directors participating include Emma Thompson, Dakota Johnson, Amy Poehler and Eva Longoria Bastón. Click on Beyond Film for the archive.

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Photo credit: Sundance Film Festival

The Sundance Film Festival is an annual event organized by the Sundance Institute – an organization founded by actor Robert Redford in 1980 – and dedicated to the growth of independent artists.

Mimmi (Aamu Milonoff), Rönkkö (Eleonoora Kauhanen), and Emma (Linnea Leino) are three ordinary girls trying to navigate the turbulence of teenage life. Mimmi is headstrong and rebellious, introduced in Finnish director Alli Haapasalo’s sophomore feature, Girl Picture, brawling with another girl in the gym over unwillingness to care about the frivolous sport at hand. Rönkkö is Mimmi’s good-natured, curly-haired best friend; she struggles with intimacy issues, at ease with male attraction and sexual desire but unable to find pleasure in the act of sex itself. Meanwhile, competitive figure skater Emma forgoes adolescent delights for the sport she holds dear—until a reluctant party appearance puts Emma within Mimmi’s chaotic orbit. This throws the two girls into a whirlwind romance chronicled over the course of three Fridays and, alongside Rönkkö, all are pulled in different directions of passion, sexuality, and self-discovery.

Rönkkö has made it her mission to finally have pleasurable sex,...

Exclusive: Danish sales company LevelK has picked up rights to the Finnish coming-of-age drama Girl Picture ahead of its screenings at Sundance and Berlin.

The film is selected for Berlin’s Generation program and will also take part in Sundance’s World Cinema Dramatic Competition, becoming the first Finnish feature to be programmed in the latter.

Alli Haapasalo (Love and Fury) directs the pic, which stars Aamu Milonoff (Eden), Eleonoora Kauhanen and Linnea Leino in the main roles. The story follows three girls on the cusp of womanhood. In three consecutive Fridays two of them experience the earth moving effects of falling in love, while the third goes on a quest to find something she’s never experienced before: pleasure.

Daniela Hakulinen and Ilona Ahti wrote the screenplay. Producers are Leila Lyytikäinen (Life after Death) and Elina Pohjola for Citizen Jane Productions. The project is supported by the Finnish Film foundation,...

Though this year’s Sundance Film Festival is going virtual-only for the second time in a row, that doesn’t mean there still isn’t plenty to be excited about. While buzzy, star-driven titles like Lena Dunham’s “Sharp Stick” and Phyllis Nagy’s “Call Jane” put women’s issues front and center, there are more than a few under-the-radar titles that also consider love and sexuality from a female viewpoint. Case in point: “Girl Picture,” the Sundance World Cinema Dramatic competition entry from Finnish director Alli Haapasalo.

The film, centered on the experiences of three young women coming of age and into love and sex, premieres January 24 as part of the Sundance lineup. Exclusive to IndieWire, watch the electric first trailer below.

Here’s the official synopsis: “Best friends Mimmi and Rönkkö have each other’s backs, always. They want to live adventurous lives, loaded with experiences and passion.