Sunday was the last day of Espoo Ciné and therefore this will be my last entry on our diary. The Zombies will return to Espoo next year, but untill then there will more diaries from upcoming festivals. Next festival diary series comes also from Finland, when the 22nd Love & Anarchy (Helsinki International Film Festival) starts on the 17th of September. In this last entry I though it would be nice to take a look of just what went on in Espoo Ciné this year.
The festival opened with Ken Loach’s brilliantly funny Looking For Eric, which is definitely one of my favorite films of the festival. After the film the celebration continued traditionally with the opening party that was held in a tent outside the festival theatre and then later on in Dubrivnik.
The first day I also got to know the festival bus, which I call “the old faithful”. The bus went once an hour from Helsinki city center to Espoo and back, and it was free for everyone. This I thought was very cool from the organizers.
This year Sello Rex in Leppävaara was also part of the festival, which was good because it is a much better movie theatre than the ones in the main festival area. Das weiße Band was shown in this theatre, because there was only a digital print of the movie available and there is no digital projector in the main festival theatre (at least not yet). There were two screenings of Haneke’s Palme d’Or-winner and they were both completely sold out.
The overall film selection this year was very good. I was very lucky and only saw one bad film at the festival. Well, if you don’t count the short films I saw… The movie in question was a British horror film called Salvage. We would have wanted to walk out from the screening, but I guess it might have been a bit inappropriate. Other than that everything else I saw were worth three stars or more. And since the festival was ten day long (instead of six), there were of course much more movie titles where to choose from. My favorite movies from the festival were Looking For Eric, Camino, Vinyan, Das Weisse Band, Nord and of course Inglourious Basterds.
But Espoo Ciné isn’t all about watching movies. Timo took part in an interesting seminar called “The End of Film – The Future of Cinema”. He was there to talk about digital distribution, and with him there was a video artist Luc Courchesne from Canada, and Kasimir Lehto from Stereoscape. Kasimir Lehto had even brought along a psychologist who’s been researching 3D and how the human eye and brains form a three-dimensional vision.
One of the most entertaining events in Espoo Ciné this year had to be the outdoor screening of Mamma Mia! with a unique live accompaniment by a gay choir called Out ‘n loud. About 1000 people attended the screening and everyone had a blast, including me.
Every year there is one Finnish premiere in Espoo Ciné and this year it was Zaida Bergroth’s directorial debut Skavabölen Pojat (Last Cowboy Standing). Unfortunately I didn’t see the film, but the overall feedback has been very positive. A Q+A with the director and main cast was arranged right after the screening.
All trough the festival there was also an interesting photograph exhibition called Visual history of Spanish cinema.
The festival ended with the long anticipated Inglourious Basterds, from which I will be posting a review soon. The movie was very bloody and violent that I even got splatters on my movie ticket as you can see above 
It came as no surprise that the screening was completely sold out. People came from all over Finland just to see the movie. Now that’s dedication!
Here at the end The Zombies would like to give special thanks to Tuomas Riskala, Timo Kuismin, Jenni Ukkonen and everyone from the Espoo Ciné organization and all the volunteers for a great festival. We would also like to take this opportunity to congratulate once again everyone from the festival for their 20th anniversary.
Untill next year!
- Essi
