A newspaper clip of a 30-year-old movie makes our middle-aged protagonist in the middle of his peak years to look for his best childhood friend. The journey leads him back to his teenage years in the 1990s depression, over-generational substance abuse and past encounters. This partly essayistic, autobiographical documentary tells the story of friendship and generational experiences while also pondering on the causes and effects of destinies in the judgmental atmosphere of our society.
Direction
Essayistic structure that refuses easy documentary conventions.
Editing
Seamless collapse of past and present through archival fragments.
Writing
Unsentimental voiceover that treats friendship as archaeology.
Director
Antti Lempiäinen
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Itä-Helsinki (Eastern Helsinki) carries specific class connotations in Finnish media—this film reclaims that geography from poverty tourism.
Director Antti Lempiäinen and 'Jarkko' were real childhood friends; the film's essayistic structure emerged from Lempiäinen's inability to locate him through conventional documentary methods.
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