Virpi Suutari: Once Upon a Time in the Forest

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!

Finland 2024 
93 minutes 

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Tue Steen Müller
Tue Steen Müller

Müller, Tue Steen
Documentary Consultant and Critic, DENMARK

Worked with documentary films for more than 20 years at the Danish Film Board, as press officer, festival representative and film consultant/commissioner. Co-founder of Balticum Film and TV Festival, Filmkontakt Nord, Documentary of the EU and EDN (European Documentary Network).
Awards: 2004 the Danish Roos Prize for his contribution to the Danish and European documentary culture. 2006 an award for promoting Portuguese documentaries. 2014 he received the EDN Award “for an outstanding contribution to the development of the European documentary culture”. 2016 The Cross of the Knight of the Order for Merits to Lithuania. 2019 a Big Stamp at the 15th edition of ZagrebDox. 2021 receipt of the highest state decoration, Order of the Three Stars, Fourth Class, for the significant contribution to the development and promotion of Latvian documentary cinema outside Latvia. In 2022 he received an honorary award at DocsBarcelona’s 25th edition having served as organizer and programmer since the start of the festival.
From 1996 until 2005 he was the first director of EDN (European Documentary Network). From 2006 a freelance consultant and teacher in workshops like Ex Oriente, DocsBarcelona, Archidoc, Documentary Campus, Storydoc, Baltic Sea Forum, Black Sea DocStories, Caucadoc, CinéDOC Tbilisi, Docudays Kiev, Dealing With the Past Sarajevo FF as well as programme consultant for the festivals Magnificent7 in Belgrade, DOCSBarcelona, Verzio Budapest, Message2Man in St. Petersburg and DOKLeipzig. Teaches at the Zelig Documentary School in Bolzano Italy.

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