According to the authors, highlighting ethnic, gender and sexual minorities is a way to better reflect a diverse world.
He stars in *The Heart Beast*, a film about two young people’s friendship and love affair. Set in France, the film does not specify the gender identity of the main character, Finnish Elina. However, she has feelings for her new half-sister Sofia.
*The Heart Beast* is Sloan’s first film role. He felt it was important to play a character who did not fall into the traditional male-female division.
The actor would like to see more films in which people from sexual and gender minorities are portrayed as ordinary people and their stories do not focus on their sexual orientation.
– It is an absurd idea that there would only be white middle-class straight men on the big screen, because the world does not consist of white middle-class straight men.
Ethnic minorities in the spotlight
Different minorities have started to appear more and more in domestic films and TV series. So far, for example, people belonging to ethnic minorities or sexual and gender minorities have only been seen in small and insignificant roles in terms of the plot.
This is what the statistics compiled three times by Apfi, the association of domestic film and TV industry content producers, tells us. The share of minorities in the roles is vanishingly small.
Now the situation is changing. For example, for the third and last season of the popular *Adults* series, Actors from different ethnic backgrounds were consciously sought to reflect the real life of Kallio.
Change starts with the factors
The increase in diversity can also be seen in the world. For example, the streaming service Netflix’s *Bridgerton* series features actors from different ethnic backgrounds, even though the series based on the books is set in 19th-century Britain.
At the beginning of November, the first romantic comedy about two gay men made by a major film studio premiered. The *Bros* movie is a Universal Pictures production.
One of the reasons why movies and TV series present a more diverse spectrum of people than before can be found in the creators. The younger generation comes from many different backgrounds.
In Pietari Vappula’s opinion, new authors even feel it is their duty to renew fictional storytelling.
– It has the power to either repeat a stereotype or dismantle it.
The responsibility of the authors
Yle’s new comedy series *Limbo* will premiere in May. It tells about a group of young people stuck at a gas station in a small town and about their relationships, crises and efforts to become popular.
Young actors were applied for the series depicting sexual and gender minorities through an open search via Instagram. There were 990 applicants.
Pietari Vappula, the producer in charge of the series, says that the creators of film and TV have a responsibility for what kind of worldview is created, especially for young people.
– I feel that it is important to tell about groups of people and people who have not been so represented in Finnish fiction. Especially in the context of comedy, you can tell what it’s like to be young in this time in a fun and relatable way.
