28/10/2013 - Finnish directors Jukka Kärkkäinen and J-P Passi’s The Punk Syndrome and Swedish directors Åsa Blanck and Johan Palmgren’s Displaced Perssons received top prizes in Berlin

Finnish directors Jukka Kärkkäinen and J-P Passi’s documentary, The Punk Syndrome [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (photo) – which shows “what punk used to be about: misfits screaming their lungs out about real problems” – received the Prix Europa for Best European TV Documentary of the Year, when the European Broadcasting Festival named its 2013 favourites last week (October 25).

The portrait of Pertti Kurikan Nimipäivät, Finland’s last kick-ass punk band instigated by four mentally disabled men, living with autism and Down’s syndrome, follows the group from total obscurity to becoming an international phenomenon, touring both Finland and abroad. Produced by Sami Jahnukainen, for Mouka Filmi (co-founded by Kärkkäinen), and entered by Finnish Pubcaster YLE, The Punk Syndrome was last year awarded the €15,000 State Prize by the National Art Council of Cinema.

Nominated for the Nordic Council’s Film Prize, it has successfully toured the international festival circuit, taking audience awards in Tampere, Austin Texas, the Too Drunk to Watch Punk Festival in Berlin, and won the Top Prize at Poland’s Era New Horizons in Wroclaw and the Most Innovative Feature honour at Switzerland’s Visions du Réel in Nyon.

Swedish directors Åsa Blanck and Johan Palmgren’s documentary Displaced Perssons won the Prix Europa in the TV Iris category: Best Intercultural TV Programme of the Year, for the depiction of Per Persson, who left Sweden more than 40 years ago and settled in Pakistan, where he married and had two daughters, now 23 and 24-years-old. They always wanted to live in Sweden, and one day they find themselves in a caravan in his old homeland outside Hässleholm.

Already released theatrically, the Blanck and Petter Brundell production for Strix Television, with Swedish pubcaster SVT, has been selected for the IDFA-International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (between November 20-December 1). SVT will air the TV series spin-off during the upcoming Christmas holiday.