Maria Ruotsala b.1961

She studied fine arts in Helsinki. She was the Young Artist of the year in 1990. Her works of art are included in the collections of Kiasma – Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, and at Centre Pompidou in Paris. 

She studied film in London, receiving the Fuji Stipend for Best Director. Her films include the award – winning short films Hyper Sensitive (40’) and Rosegarden(50’), Happy Home, her TV mini-series won critical and audience acclaim, bringing her the award for Best Female Actress at the annual Venla Gala, the “Finnish Emmys”. Her 1st feature film is Apeiron, receiving widespread critical acclaim and it was nominated as the Best Female Actress and the Best Male actor at the Venla Gala. It was already selected for Venice film festival but unfortunately became ineligible due to an early TV broadcast in Finland. 

She currently works on a feature film O and a tv-series Mirdja, developed at TorinoFilmLab workshop and a feature film Black Sun, developed at TorinoFilmLabwith script consultant Franz Rodenkirchen. Despite a strong international interest and attached partners, Black Sun is looking for a new financial anchor.

Maria Ruotsala has been described as a talented visionary, a unique filmmaker, and one of the brightest hopes in Finnish cinema.  

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”Ruotsala’s talent and vision are undeniable, and her original art is of international class.”  

                                                                                                                                                             a film historian, critic Antti Alanen

 

“I have known Maria Ruotsala professionally for almost thirty years, in my roles as Production Director of the Finnish Film Foundation (1996-2003) and as a film commissioner for Yle Drama (2003-2021), and I consider her to be one of the most uncompromising and original Finnish filmmakers”. ​​​​​​                                                                                             Erkki Astala

 

 

“I had the pleasure to work with film director Maria Ruotsala as a Drama producer in Swedish Yle broadcast company when she made her stunning film Apeiron. It showed what an important artistic spirit she is in the Finnish film scene: visually extremely talented, incorruptible and internationally interesting filmmaker”.

​​​​​​​​​​​Camilla Thelestam

 

 

“Maria Ruotsala is an uncompromising filmmaker. In her works, a strong content is combined with a visionary and unique narrative voice.

 

As the Chief of Fiction for Svenska Yle I had the pleasure to watch on 2010 how ambitiously Ruotsala created her previous film, “Apeiron”. Despite a limited budget, she created an incomparable and unique sound and visual world for a philosophical story.

At the Midnight Sun Film Festival in 2014 I had the pleasure to present the film to an excited audience composed of both domestic and international cinema professionals and enthusiasts. In connection with the screening, a justifiable concern was raised in the cinema. New, mainstream divergent, visually powerful and thematically ambitious films are far too seldom seen these days.

 

In all of her work, Maria Ruotsala has listened to her own, perceptive voice as she has developed her cinematic expression regardless of mainstream trends.”                                                                                                                                                                Liselott Forsman 

Executive Producer, Yle International Drama Projects 

Midnight Sun Film Festival, Chair of Finnish Discussion

Head of EBU (European Broadcasting Union) Fiction Bureau ​​​​​

(At the moment Liselott is the ceo/ Nordisk Film and Tv ​​​​fond.)  

 

 

 EXCERPTS FROM THE CRITICS OF MARIA RUOTSALA’ S FILMS:

 

Hyper Sensitive (40’)

 

Eventually! Let the fanfares play! Finnish cinema has saved! The reason is a great film written and directed by Maria Ruotsala. 

Turun Sanomat, Kari Salminen

 

Maria Ruotsala i s one of the most talented Finnish filmmakers.

​​​​​​​​Helsingin Sanomat, Kristiina Markkanen

 

 

Maria Ruotsala moves in the sensitive areas of intellect and emotion. She does notcare about a coherent story but trusts in the image and the interaction of words, actors and landscape.

Hyper Sensitive is an ambitious film revolving in its own isolated world. The imagesremain in the mind to rotate in a strange way.

There i s nothing Finnish in the view of the world as well as in the visual narration.The references would rather be to Joseph Losey and Alain Resnais.

​​​​​​​​​Helsingin Sanomat, Mikael Fränti

 

 

The new grandiose film is Hyper Sensitive, directed by Maria Ruotsala. It containsdense and philosophically ambitious research about the difficulty of loving.

 

Stylish cinematography brings into mind throwbacks from Godard and the NewWave. The narration balances deliciously on the border of realism and surrealism.

 

Ruotsala uses bold symbolism, even breaking down the unity of time and place. Surprisingly, the effect is not hollow or artificial. Instead, the solutions retain their significance and increase the power of her expression. Suspense grows out of relationships between people, upheld by a continuous conceptual motion, a feeling of not watching anything pre-digested but something that will continue to live in your mind. ​​​​ ​                                                                                                                              Kainuun Sanomat, Pekka Huolman

 

Rosegarden (50’)

 

Maria Ruotsala has again proved that she i s one of the brightest hopes of Finnishcinema. Rosegarden i s not a conventional narration. I t i s a ver y special one. Theresult i s a direct hit.

​​​​​​​​​Turun Sanomat, Kari Salminen

 

Rosegarden introduces a talented and original filmmaker.

This is a fairy tale, so it’s natural how the story cuts forward according to the main characters’ mental states. And they are great, funny visions!

 The biggest miracle i s that the f ilm does not contain any unnecessary details eventhough i t straggles. All is essential and presented in appropriate s i ze. The sto y i sfull- bodied. ​​​​​

​​​​​​​​​Ilta-Sanomat, Matti Linnavuori

 

 

Happy Home (3 X 60’)

 

Happy Home will remain in the history of Finnish television drama.

 Maria Ruotsala’s grip is of instinctive sensitivity and expressive power.

​​​​​​​​Keski-Pohjanmaa, Hannu Björkbacka

 

This T V series i s a rare gem in the domestic drama produc tion.

​​​​​​​Huvustadsbladet, Malin Slotte

 

Happy Home i s the high point of the year. The series ended t wo weeks ago but theharrowing drama i s still alive in my mind.

​​​​​​​​Helsingin Sanomat, Mikael Fränti

 

Apeiron (90 min)

 

In recent years, Apeiron i s the most complete, the most beautiful and the mostchallenging A t house film in Finland.

​​​​​​​​​​Filmihullu, Lauri T imonen

 

As a science fiction about good and evil, Maria Ruotsala’s Apeiron i s an original andvisually impressive version of Leena Krohn’s” impossible to film” novel Umbra. Theadaptation detaches itself from the original work and takes off into another direction. Krohn’s accurate expression receives an equally thought- out cinematic counterpart.What suddenly becomes visible in the sci-fi is the inner space of the mind – in thespirit of Kubrick, Tarkovsky and Lynch, but also Pasolini, Buñuel and Malick.

 

As an art film, Apeiron surpasses the clichés of realism and genre by the freedom of surrealism and avant-garde. It has been made with love and not money, with thought and not effects, but it still fulfils the requirements of science fiction. The result is fabulous." 

 

Miika Hyytiäinen has composed the score which is full of rich elements. Among them, Daniel Schultz with his bright soprano rises above the rest." (Hannu Björkbacka, Sodankylä 2014 Festival Catalogue)

​​​​​​​​Sodankylä Festival Catalogue, Hannu Björkbacka 

 

 

Apeiron is image-driven, and a strong and original approach emerges in it. Impossible to classify, I was thinking about affinities with Expressionists and Surrealists, the nightmares in The Hour of the Wolf, the visit to the gallery in Vertigo. For a while I thought that it is futile and impossible to imitate Tarkovsky, but the film gets stronger towards the end: the images get more compelling and original. 

 

Made on a very low budget, the financing came from Finland's Swedish-speaking television, and Swedish is not the mother's tongue for the director or the male lead. It is a distancing factor. Although screened on 2K DCP, the film often looks like it has been shot in low definition. Despite these limitations Apeiron is compelling. 

 

It is a dystopian vision. The main location is an asylum for dangerous mental patients, and the leading couple are doctors there. We embark on a journey into madness, also into new kinds of madness. The work follows the doctors to their home, but "jag villinte höra djävulens röst här hemma", "I don't want to hear the devil's voice here at home", states Irina to Sampo. 

 

There is a woman who has become a circle (evoking la Grande Hystérie of the Salpêtrière days of Charcot, recently covered by Alice Vinocour in Augustine). There is a space traveller who has lost his mind and become a deranged violent criminal. The novel and the film are meditations about existence on our way to a Weltanschauung informed by quantum physics. They are meditations of "en större, ogripbar ordning", "a bigger, unfathomable order". The meaninglessness, the emptiness. On the journey to space nothing unexpected happened. "Where were you really?" There were no contures, no form. Where were you? Where you belong, on the other side of the big bang, on the arrow of time, in the wind of time. 

 

During the last half an hour there are unforgettable visions: - "The woman without a face" (her face impressively disfigured, not quite an Elephant Woman). - The parallel woman to Irina Björklund. "I am the other woman whom you left alone in the night". - The boy beyond the mirror. - The visit to the gallery, to see the Adoration of the Magi by Giotto. - Sampo Sarkola trading places with an asylum inmate. - A theatre performance with a real rape about to be enacted in the presence of the woman's mother and brother. The auditorium turns into a lynch mob. 

 

There is a cosmic sense with recurrent images of the sky, the space, the ocean. The sky is the ceiling in the final theatre sequence. 

 

The music and the sound are impressive. 

 

I look forward to seeing Apeiron again, and I look forward to more films by Maria Ruotsala. 

​​​​​​​​​​A film historian, critic Antti Alanen