video by Frank Stender for Europanet - Invideo

Shooting Stars at EFP

Finn Minna Haapkylä was voted best supporting actress by the national film Academy for her debut performance in Veikko Aaltonen’s Kiss Me In The Rain. She subsequently starred in Lovers and Leavers by Aku Louhimies.

"My latest film was called Lovers and Leavers and it is a story about a woman who is trying to find perfect love in the world. It was hard, because I played in every scene of the film, so that means that I was working 24 hours a day. I had four hours sleep a night and things like that. It was physically very hard. I'm not that interested in working in the United States, it is so huge, so big. I like Europe and I like European films, that is the main reason.
For me it is not the language, it is the director and the play or the film that I'm with and then the language is something that comes secondly. 'Finnish saying'... Exactly that means: 'If you try to get a pine tree you will get in the bushes right away - it means: if you try too hard to get too high you will fall down' ... that's really Finnish".