Esa-Pekka Salonen

Mikki Kunttu

Kari Heiskanen

Anna Kelo

The documentary dives intimately behind the scenes of the Finnish National Opera and sucks the viewer in like the best of thrillers. The three hours fly by, even for those who aren’t necessarily interested in opera as an art form.

Featuring seven stories from seven auteurs from around the world, the film chronicles this unprecedented moment in time, and is a true love letter to the power of cinema and its storytellers.

After experiencing a certain void when the premier of their film “The Third Pole” was cancelled due to the Pandemic. The film makers decided to go on a journey with their cameraman Andri Haraldsson and capture those strange times.

It’s spring in the Ecuadorian Amazon and the Uyantza festival is underway with the community celebrating all that the forest has to offer. Meanwhile, news is breaking around the world that a novel virus is spreading and a state of emergency is declared across the country. As people test positive for COVID-19 in the community, some families decide to leave and head deeper into the jungle. Disconnected from school, friends, the internet, and work, one family learns to reconnect with life in the forest. The children begin to unlearn the national curriculum, and instead are taught Indigenous knowledge that mainstream schools normally pass over. As COVID-19 wreaks havoc around the planet, the family reconnect to their ancestral ways, but as news arrives that Ecuador’s lockdown will end soon, will the family choose to return?

A video essay by Mark Rappaport, which spans René Magritte and Michelangelo to Bonnie & Clyde. Let’s mask up to rob a bank! But make sure that you are home before the curfew.

In the Finnish forests was an unclimbed route called the Lappnor project. It was considered to be the hardest climbing route in the world and perhaps impossible for a human.  Nalle Hukkataival, a strong Finnish climber took up the challenge. It required almost four years of total commitment and his efforts were followed by hundreds of thousands of climbers around the world.  When Nalle finally succeeded, it blew away the whole climbing world like nothing before. The first 9A boulder was climbed!  The documentary follows Nalle's journey from the very beginning, all the way to the first ascent almost half a decade later. It captures the incredible dedication that was needed to deal with all the variables and to take that last step to open the next level of climbing.

The pandemic has many faces. It has affected everyone across the world, but each of us in a different way. A collection of individual fates observed in fine detail. And a filmic world tour that looks down on places of residence from above and yet gets very close to the people.