The best 11 days of the cinematic year are here – Love & Anarchy is back! We return to Helsinki cinemas full of gratitude towards everyone who supported the festival during the Save R&A campaign at the end of last year. The campaign helped us get through the crisis, but times are still tough. In an era of budget cuts, the significance of culture has never been greater, and we hope that our festival will provide a much-needed boost to going to the movies together and immersing ourselves in new worlds.
Among the programme’s over 130 feature films and nearly a hundred shorts, you’ll find many works that wouldn’t otherwise be seen in cinemas, as well as premieres of the most anticipated new releases that will receive wide distribution after the festival. We are proud to say that the festival programme is once again geographically and stylistically diverse. As mainstream cinema increasingly leans towards safe and easily digestible content, with us you can marvel at what else cinematic art has to offer!
In the Next Level theme, we present the most boldly experimental and uniquely crafted films, including Am I?, a film created entirely with AI. Fresh new winds are also blowing in the Indies from the Baltic Sea selection, which includes the millennial rom-com Apple Thieves by Samppa Batal. The National Competition showcasing the year’s best short films is also of top quality once again.
The R&A favourite theme Asian Cuts is particularly extensive this year, including new releases from major film countries like Japan, India, and Korea, as well as from Singapore and Kazakhstan! The African Express selection is led by Dahomey, the Golden Bear winner that delves into the legacy of colonialism.
In the time-hopping films of the Rewrite History theme, familiar genres are tackled with a Love & Anarchy twist, from period drama (Firebrand) to western (The Dead Don’t Hurt). The short film programme also takes you on time travels. The R&A Shorts: Rewrite History screening explores, reinterprets, and learns from the past, while the Utopia/Dystopia shorts screening stretches into an uncertain future, seeking answers to today’s big questions.
The crown jewel of the Uncanny Valley theme, dedicated to the most peculiar festival films, is the mind-expanding sci-fi exploration Infinite Summer by R&A favourite Miguel Llansó. The more anarchistic side of the programme is showcased in the selection Midnight Mayhem, featuring films like French The Balconettes and Estonian Chainsaws Were Singing. We have also wanted to highlight films that have received less attention on the big screen but, in our opinion, still deserve to find their audience, such as the ecstatic fitness romance Love Lies Bleeding and the dream logic-driven Americana road trip The Sweet East.
The Animated Dreams theme presents some of the year’s strong animated films, with the most eye-catching one being the Lithuanian Flow. Gender and sexuality are explored in films such as the Lynchian nightmare I Saw the TV Glow, which became a talking point at the Sundance Film Festival. The new theme Live, Laugh, Love & Anarchy offers delightful comedy, different lifestyles, relationship twists, worlds clashing – all, of course, with an attitude of love and anarchy.
Welcome to the movies with us, friends!
Pekka Lanerva
Artistic Director
Outi Rehn
Programme Manager
Annu Suvanto
Curator, Short Films
Inari Ylinen
Communications Manager, Curator