20/02/2015 - Saara Cantell’s Jill and Joy’s Winter is one of three new features being supported by the Finnish Film Foundation

In her second children’s film about Jill and Joy, based on Finnish author Marjatta Kurenniemi’s novels, Finnish director Saara Cantell sees the McTiny family move in with her nine-year-old characters. Things don’t look good in the beginning, but everything has a happy ending, especially at Christmas.

Sami Keski-Vähälä wrote the script for the Zodiak Finland production, which is currently shooting and will be released domestically by Nordisk Film Finland. In addition, Jill and Joy’s Winter is one of three features that the Finnish Film Foundation will support by €1.2 million in production funding.

Finnish directors Anastasia Lapsui and Markku Lehmuskallio, who most recently collaborated on the documentary Eleven Images of a Human (2013), will next join forces for Tsamo, a 19^th-century drama. They also wrote the story of the Finnish governor of Alaska, whose brother buys a teenage Indian girl and brings her to Finland. At the time, Alaska was part of both Russia and Finland – and so a battle over the girl’s identity begins. Kaarle Aho will produce for Making Movies, with Finnish pubcaster YLE Fem, and PEK will release the movie domestically in April.

The foundation will also chip in for Danish director Max Kestner’s Fang Rung, an SF Film production that will be co-produced by Finland’s Yellow Film & TV (Jarkko Hentula), with YLE FST. Dunja Gry Jensen wrote the story set in Copenhagen in 2095: the oceans are rising and all natural freshwater is gone, so Copenhagen’s head of security undergoes molecular fission to send his other half back in time to find a solution to the problems – a solution lost in 2015.