29/01/2013 - Released in more than 60 countries, Finnish director Timo Vuorensola and producer Tero Kaukomaa's dark sci-fi comedy will this year be launched in an extended version

Finnish director Timo Vuorensola and producer Tero Kaukomaa’s dark sci-fi comedy, Iron Sky [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Tero Kaukomaa
interview: Timo Vuorensola
interview: Timo Vuorensola
film profile], which was launched at last year’s Berlin International Film Festival to be sold to more than 60 territories, was yesterday (January 28) awarded the Australian Oscar – the AACTA prize – in the Visual Effects Category, at a ceremony in Sydney.

“We wanted to make a film that would look like a big-budget Hollywood movie, and we succeeded, although we had only had a fraction of the money (around €7.5 million),” said Kaukomaa, who completed the financing with crowd funding and investment.

An alternate take on history, Iron Sky follows a large group of Nazis who, after losing World War II, flees to the dark side of the moon. 70 years later, they have constructed a massive armada of flying saucers and are now, in 2018, poised to attack the unsuspecting Earth.

The budget for visual effects was less than €750,000: “We did them in less than a year with a small, but highly specialised team of 20 artists working in Tampere, Finland. We had never done anything that big and were finished only two days before the premiere,” explained VFX director Samuli Torssonen, who went on to set up a new company, Troll VFX.

With an international cast including Christopher Kirby, Julia Dietze, Götz Otto, Peta Sergeant, Udo Kier and Stephanie Paul, Iron Sky, which took 183,000 admissions domestically, will later this year be released in an extended version, 20 minutes longer than the original.

Vuorensola, Kaukoma’s production company, Blind Spot Pictures, and Troll X are currently raising crowd funding for a Hollywood adaption of Jeremiah Harm, a Boom! Studios graphic novel about a bounty hunter in future New York.