Lalli's Almost 18 feature debut takes top awards at Finland's Jussis

by Jorn Rossing Jensen

06/02/2013 - Finnish director Maarit Lalli won for Best Film, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay, and Antti Jokinen’s Purge received five prizes, when Finland’s Filmauri presented the national film awards

Finnish director Maarit Lalli’s low-budget (€315,000) feature debut Almost 18 [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (photo) – which she also co-wrote and produced for Huh huh Filmi – won for Best Film, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay, when Finland’s Filmauri association of film professionals presented the national film awards, the Jussis, at a gala in Helsinki yesterday (February 3).

Lalli’s film, which was nominated in six categories, portrays five Finnish teenagers, Karri, Pete, André, Akseli and Joni “with normal families, normal problems, normal feelings – there was nothing we couldn’t overcome. And then one year everything started going to shit.” Almost 18 sold 39,000 tickets in Finland.

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Both Antti Jokinen’s Purge [+see also:
trailer
film profile] – No 3 on the 2012 charts, from 209,000 admissions, and Finland’s official Oscar candidate - and Aku Louhimies’s Naked Harbour [+see also:
trailer
interview: Laura Birn
film profile] were nominated for eight Jussis; Jokinen left with five trophies, while Louhimies was awarded none. Jukka Kärkkäinen and J-P Passi’s The Punk Syndrome [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which was nominated for the Nordic Council’s Film Prize, won for Best Documentary and Best Editing.

Finnish 80-year-old actress Anneli Sauli, whose most recent feature was Saraa Cantell’s Heartbeats [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2009), received a Life Achievement Jussi – in concrete. Sauli, who is still active, has played in 57 Finnish film and TV productions, including Aki Kurismäki’s The Man without a Past [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2002); she will shortly be in Lauri Nurkse’s drama-comedy series Scraps.