Directing
Mika Taanila
Born May 22, 1965 · Helsinki, Finland (age 61)
Mika Taanila is a filmmaker and visual artist based in Helsinki. His films have been screened at several international film festivals such as TIFF Toronto, IFFR Rotterdam, Berlinale, CPH:DOX, Clermont-Ferrand, Karlovy-Vary, Midnight Sun Film Festival, IDFA Amsterdam and Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen. Taanila’s moving image installations have been shown at major international group shows, such as Venice…
Known For
Spindrift · 2013Spindrift
2013
MovieDocumentary
In 1965, Swedish composer/musician Jan Bark proposed an experiment for a new kind of 'music for black-and-white TV'. Bark's friend Erkki Kurenniemi programmed the animations. The original version was lost: this reconstruction was made with the help of Bark's diaries, laboratory notes and reminiscences from people involved.
Nox · 2026Nox
2026
MovieComedyThriller
From the wreckage of a buddy comedy rises something stranger: a story that fractures midway into an existential revenge thriller—burning forward with the inevitability of the sun’s passage across the sky.
D Is for Distance · 2026D Is for Distance
2026
MovieDocumentary
A film essay montage of contemporary footage, archive and cinema history, about the age of post-truth and how one young man’s childhood epilepsy became representative of the woes of the world and how he triumphed against adversity.
RoboCup99 · 2000RoboCup99
★ 6.02000
MovieDocumentary
Failed Emptiness · 2024Failed Emptiness
2024
MovieDocumentary
A three-week vacation in the middle of a heatwave. Failed Emptiness is an existential thriller that describes the familiar experience of emptiness when responsibilities end.
A City Symphony · 1995A City Symphony
★ 8.01995
MovieDocumentary
The Helsinki of the 1990s, longed for by many, comes to life in Heikki Ahola's City Symphony. Celebrating its 30th anniversary, this classic montage film offers a unique glimpse into the pulsating life of the capital at all hours of the day. More than 30 young filmmakers worked on the documentary. Filmed between September 1993 and February 1995, City Symphony encounters the contrasting spirits of Helsinki – including unemployment and luxury, homeliness and internationalism. As the title suggests, music plays a central role in the film, with Tuomas Kantelinen responsible for the score. You won't find a more comprehensive journey through 1990s Helsinki than Kaupunkisinfonia. The world just before the breakthrough of the internet and the economic boom already looks very different.
Flame · 2018Flame
★ 7.02018
MovieDocumentary
A fractured melodrama, based on damaged frames from the last minutes of the only remaining nitrate reel of the lost feature film Silja – Fallen Asleep When Young (1937) directed by Teuvo Tulio. All screening prints and the negative of the film were destroyed in a 1959 studio fire. A sequence from the middle of the film was found at La Cinémathèque Française in Paris in 2015.
The Future Is Not What It Used to Be · 2002The Future Is Not What It Used to Be
★ 6.72002
MovieDocumentary
A documentary film about Erkki Kurenniemi (b. 1941), whose career represents a surprisingly natural blend of music, film, computers, robotics, science and art.















