05/12/2013 - Taavi Vartia’s 1.2 M€ family adventure is the first of a three-project deal set to be shot in Greece, followed by a TV-show and one more feature.

“After three years of developing Adventures in Greece [+see also:
trailer
film profile], we are happy to announce the film will start shooting in April 2014, wrap up in June and premiere in Finland on December 12, 2014”, said director Taavi Vartia at the press conference on Wednesday.

The 1.2 M€ project, co-financed by the Finnish Film Fund and the Greek Film Center, will be a family-oriented adventure in the vain of Goonies. A group of Finnish teenagers vacationing in the island of Kos, run into a band of smugglers looting a remote cave with the help of an unwilling local girl. The boys will help save both her and the island’s lost treasures.

Jarkko Hentula will be producing for Finnish company Yellow Group, in co-production with Lilet Botassi of local Inkas Films, while Nordisk Film and Channel 4 have secured distribution in Finland. The film will be shot entirely in Greece, mainly on location in Kos, with a mostly local crew. Orfeas Avgoustidis, Natalia Dragoumi and Yiannis Zouganelis will bring on the local star-power to compliment that of Laura Malmivaara and Ville Myllyrinne.

Meanwhile, Taavi Vartia’s bond with Lilet Botassi’s Inkas Films will be cemented with two more projects in the company’s pipeline: The Missing Route is a 12-episode TV series written by Vartia, with himself attached to direct, following the adventures of a Finnish and a Greek boy who discover a hidden pathway that links Finnish beaches to the Greek archipelagos. The project has already secured backing by MEDIA and the Finnish Lapland Film Commission.

Mamma’s Boy (working title), Vartia’s next feature, will star Orpheas Avgoustidis as “a man who finds it hard to be the hero and the softy for his wife at the same time,” said the director. The film will also be produced by Jarko Hentula, with Botassi as coproducer and is to be shot on location in Athens and a Greek island.