Concrete Night

Director: Pirjo Honkasalo
Finland, Sweden, Denmark | Finnish
2013 | 96min | B&W
Subtitles: English
Indian Premiere
Friday, Nov 6 Club House, 4:00 PM
Presented in collaboration with the Embassy of Finland, New Delhi.

Concrete Night is a dream‐like odyssey through Helsinki over the course of one night. The protagonist of the film is a 14‐year‐old boy named Simo who is still searching for a sense of self and the ability to protect himself from his surroundings. Simo and his big brother Ilkka are the sons of a helpless and unpredictable single mother. Their chaotic home is located deep in the heart of a concrete jungle in Helsinki. Ilkka has one day of freedom left before starting his prison sentence. The mother persuades Simo to spend the last night with his brother. During the course of the day and night spent roaming around Helsinki, the brothers witness incidents they would rather not see. Vulnerable Simo is not equipped to justify what he sees or delude himself – seeing things accurately as they are. To him, the unfiltered world seems unbearable. Finally a casual encounter with a photographer, whose intentions Simo misreads, launches him into blind fear. In the panic‐stricken violence that ensues, Simo finds his missing identity, his true face.

Pirjo Honkasalo

Pirjo Honkasalo is a highly established director, cinematographer and screenwriter who has won countless awards for her work. She directed several feature films in the 1970’s and 80’s together with Pekka Lehto, like Flame Top which was selected for Cannes Film Festival 1980. In the 1990’s she continued alone and turned to feature documentaries, directing the award winning The Trilogy of the Sacred and the Satanic, Mysterion, Tanjuska and the 7 Devils, and Atman. She has also directed the stunningly beautiful The 3 Rooms of Melancholia, a story of how Russian and Chechen children were psychologically affected by the war. The film is still one of the most award winning feature documentaries ever. She was then invited to Japan to direct a film in Tokyo coming out with her film ITO –A Diary of an Urban Priest. She has had well over twenty retrospectives of her work worldwide, acted as a member of several international juries and is actively giving international masterclasses.

Credits

Director: Pirjo Honkasalo
Producers: Misha Jaari, Mark Lwoff
Screenwriter: Pirjo Honkasalo
Cinematographer: Peter Flinckenberg
Editor: Niels Pagh Andersen
Sound: Jan Alvermark
Music: Karl Frid, Pär Frid
Production Company: Bufo Ltd
Cast: Johannes Brotherus, Jari Virman, Juhan Ulfsak, Anneli Karppinen

Festival Appearances & Awards

European Film Festival, Italy 2014 – Officine Lab Award for Best Supporting Actor
Pula Film Festival 2014 – Best Feature Film
Cinema d’Auteur, Barcelona 2014
Queer Lisboa 2014
Prague International Film Festival 2014
Minneapolis St. Paul Film Festival 2014
Glasgow Youth Film Festival 2014
Belfast Film Festival 2014
Göteborg International Film Festival 2014
Rotterdam International Film Festival 2014
Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2014
Toronto International Film Festival 2013
St. Petersburg International Film Festival 2013
Warsaw International Film Festival 2013
Thessaloniki International Film Festival 2013
Leeds International Film Festival 2013
Scanorama European Film Forum 2013