Absurdist, Soviet-Era Dramedy ‘The Missile’ Takes Top Prize at Finnish Film Affair

variety.com:

Christopher Vourlias Miia Tervo’s “The Missile,” an absurdist dramatic comedy based on the real-life story of a Soviet missile landing in Finnish Lapland in 1984, took home the top prize Thursday at the Finnish Film Affair, an annual industry event running parallel to the Helsinki International Film Festival — Love & Anarchy. “The Missile” was one of five fiction feature works in progress that were pitched to an audience of industry guests in Helsinki on Sept.

21, during the Finnish Film Affair’s showcase of local and regional projects. The sophomore feature of Finnish director Tervo, known for the female-centered romantic comedy “Aurora,” the film is produced by Kaisla Viitala and Daniel Kuitunen of Helsinki-based Elokuvayhtiö Komeetta, with Stellar Film co-producing. “The Missile” tells the empowering story of an abused single mother working at a small-town newspaper who gets drawn into the investigation surrounding the missile crash, which upends life in a small northern village.

Speaking to Variety ahead of the Finnish Film Affair, Tervo said she wanted to portray an average woman who suddenly finds herself thrust into the corridors of power. “I wanted to write a fragile and insecure woman,” she said. “I didn’t want to have this superwoman.

She’s very strong. She finds the strength inside her, but these things are also really scary.” Tervo described her protagonist “as a proactive hero in the midst of these men’s war games,” but also as a woman who is curious and funny and “has a chance to prove — mainly to herself — that she is capable.” In its citation of the award-winning project, the jury noted: “The director’s personal voice can be heard in the timeless but also topical northern comedy, with plenty of local.