With a budget of six million euros, Sisu is director Jalmari Helander’s passion project. The film will have its Finnish premiere on Friday 27 January.
What happens when a gold digger who lost his family and home in the Winter War finds a fabulous haul and encounters a group of Nazis in the Lapland War?
It’s going to be a fight.
We picked five interesting stories around the film and added a few clips from the film:
1. Rambo drove director Jalmari Helander’s action film
The film made an indelible impression on Helander. There was no going back after that, he tells Yle.
In action and shooter films, Helander has always been interested in the possibility of redefining the world. If necessary, the laws of physics can also be manipulated to suit the conditions of the story. *Inside* Aatami Korpi is sometimes in such a predicament that a little imagination is required to survive.
*Sisu* is Helander’s childhood dream come true, which is reflected in the end result.
– I’ve been a huge fan of 1990s action movies and hoped that one day I could do something similar myself. I’m so happy that Sisu looks like I wanted it to.
2. Terrier disobeyed instructions, horse ran off into the fells
The funny side plots of the *Sisu* movie are the introductions of Aatami Korve’s sweet and apparently loyal dog. From there, the greyhound goes on its own way, but always returns to its owner in the end.
– When cutting, we had to cheat in order to make it look as if the dog had actually been there somehow sensibly, Helander laughs.
Helander had originally envisioned something with a hard-nosed look next to Korve, but the producer had by chance seen Tommila’s cute Sulo dog in a photo. We argued for a while, after which Helander agreed to take a sweet Bedlinton terrier alongside Aatami Korve.
The film is full of spectacular riding scenes, but they were not created easily. One shooting day dawned exactly as Helander had dreamed for the pictures. The camera crew and their horses went straight to the top of the fell.
It turned out that the horse could not stand the gusty desert wind blowing from the Arctic Ocean. The animal didn’t stop to ask questions, but went straight on its way. When the horse was finally found more than ten kilometers away, the prop had been left along the escape route.
– All the gold and junk had fallen along the desert. It felt like hell, says Helander.
A few seconds of usable material remained from the \”perfect shooting day\”.
3. The protagonist has a name that is as cheeky as possible
According to the director-writer, Aatami Korpi was the dumbest name he could come up with for the film’s main character.
The backstory of the fighter in Sisukka was never fully written. It is certain that Aatami Korpi lost his family and home in the winter war. The raven became bitter and began a revenge spree.
It was time to try to start over, find something else to do. Digging for gold was okay, because the main character didn’t need the company of people.
In the film, we see when Aatami Korvelle gets a fairy-tale stroke of luck. What follows is a hopeless misfortune when he runs into a Nazi patrol who is tipped off about the gold. The encounter leads to a long one-man war against the Nazis, but the motive is much more than the monetary value of the loot.
– That fight is not only about gold, but about principle and that Aatami Korvelle does not give a damn. He doesn’t like things being taken from him again. It’s a matter of principle, says Helander.
4. A lead role tailor-made for her sister’s husband
Jalmari Helander admits to being a big fan of Jorma Tommila, who performs in Aatami Korpea Sisu.
At that time, Helander had no idea that later, by chance, he would become Tommila’s brother-in-law. Helander’s older sister and Jorma Tommila got married in 2008.
– I immediately started asking him for everything related to movies, but he mostly refused.
Since then, the duo became a pair of radars in the film field. In the last decade, Tommila was seen, among other things, in Helander’s *Rare Exports* and *Big Game*.
When Helander started writing *Sisu*, he couldn’t think of anyone other than Tommila as the main character.
– There has always been some initial strength in that person. It is still very difficult to think of any other Finnish actor for the main role of *Sisu*. If Jorma hadn’t made it, it would have been a difficult place.
5. Content spreads in the US – under its own name
*Sisu* had its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2022. Critics liked what they saw and, according to Helander, the audience welcomed the movie with joy.
The most difficult thing, however, is the film’s access to exceptionally wide distribution in the United States. Lionsgate is giving *Sisu* one of the widest distributions that a Nordic film has ever had in the United States. The distribution of at least 500 screens is significant even in European terms.
– And even with the name Sisu, and not any Yankee name. Its name is also Sisu in America, Helander enthuses.
– If the audience receives it as well as in Toronto, anything can happen.
*Are you going to see the Sisu movie? You can discuss the topic until 23:00 on January 28.*