In Memoriam / Islanders
Creative documentary by Matleena Jänis
“‘“A cinematic triptych that masterfully balances loss, family history and the pure joy of color.”
– Tampere Film Festival Jury 2025
”A film of incredible emotional range and aesthetic beauty, full of humour and poignancy.”
-Foca Film Days, Turkey 2025
”In its imagery we sense both beauty and urgency, a spark that speaks to the present while reaching beyond it.”
– Beijing International Short Film Festival 2025
Synopsis: The film tells the story of the grief surrounding a mother’s death, memories of loss and the joy of summer cabin life in the Finnish lake landscape, drawn from 8 mm home movies filmed by three generations.
Directors statement: The project got its start when my mother passed away. Among the belongings she left behind, I found a stack of nostalgic home movies, filmed at a lakeside summer cabin, which proved crucial in dealing with my grief. I yearned for the happy time they portrayed but also realised that it was merely a mental image that I carried with me. I began to study intergenerational issues and representations of the past: what and how we remember, and how we tell those stories. The meanings connected to water and lake landscapes manifest themselves in the stream of life, death, and memory. The film creates a temporal utopia where the past and the present co-exist simultaneously.
Curator´s word: How do we exist within the folds of time? Here, existence is a becoming through the active embrace of plural histories, an entanglement through which we weave and are woven into the fabric of time. Gestures like these are responses, bodily and imaginatively, to the question of how to exist in times: salvaging fragments from the fault lines of memory, entwining with the specters that seep through history, unearthing unrealized potentials from the ruins of obsolete media, and wielding fiction as a pick to strike at the bedrock of reality. – Zifei Wang, BISFF 2025
Awards
2025, The Signs Award, International Festival Signs of the Night, Italy
2025, Best Documentary Film, AFSAD International Short Film Festival, Turkey
2025, The Award of the Youth Jury, Tampere Film Festival, Finland
2025, Special Mention in the National Competition, Tampere Film Festival, Finland
Upcoming Screenings
Close:Up Edinburgh Docufest 25.4.2026
Photographic Centre Nykyaika, Tampere, Finland 31.5.–28.6. 2026
Riihisaari Museum, Savonlinna, Finland 10.10.2026–7.1.2027
Past Screenings
2026 Vera Filmfestival, Mariehamn, Åland
2026 Kino Kilta, Turku, Finland
2026 Cinema Orion, Helsinki, Finland
2026 Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival Market, France
2025 Venezia Shorts, Italy
2025 Kino Laika, Karkkila, Finland
2025 Beijing International Short Film Festival, Beijing, China
2025 Zagreb Film Festival, Zagreb, Croatia
2025 AFSAD International Short Film Festival, Ankara, Turkey
2025 International Festival Signs of the Night, Urbino, Italy
2025 Foça International Archeaology and Cultural Heritage Documentary Film Festival, Izmir, Turkey
2025 Tampere Film Festival, Tampere, Finland
2025 Kino Kuvakukko, Kuopio, Finland
2025 Kino Aurora, Jyväskylä, Finland
2025 VB Photography Centre, Kuopio, Finland
Watch trailer on Vimeo >
Credits
Written, directed and edited by Matleena Jänis
Main cinematography: Matleena Jänis, Pertti Ahva, Paavo Jänis
Sound Design: Janne Jankeri/Piippu Film Sound
Music: Tuomas Kallio
Animations: Kati Immonen
Production: J Ä N I S
Genre: Creative documentary
Lenght: 24,40 ́
Original language: Finnish
Subtitled in English
Shooting format: 8 mm
Screening formats: DCP, 4K, 2K, HD
Production year 2025
Country of production: Finland
Age rating: G – All ages admitted
Distribution: AV-arkki, the Centre for Finnish Media Art>
Funding: Kone Foundation, Arts Promotion Centre Finland, The Finnish Cultural Foundation’s North Savo Regional Fund, The
Alfred Kordelin Foundation’s Jyväskylä Fund, Finnish Freshwater Foundation.
Director ́s biography
MA Matleena Jänis works as a filmmaker and photographic artist in Eastern Finland. She has directed, written, shot, and edited several award-winning documentary films, short films, and animated films, which have been broadcast on television and screened in numerous international film festivals since 1997. She has taken part in exhibitions, published photo books, and curated art exhibitions and events.
Matleena Jänis holds academic degrees in both film and photography and a degree in social and cultural anthropology, with a minor in film and television studies.
In her work, Matleena Jänis has explored subjects such as memory, cultural history, transgenerationalism, imaginary worlds and religions. Her work has a distinctive, rich style and is filled with warm-hearted humour.
ARTIST STATEMENT: Art is play. Hope lies within humanity’s inventiveness, playfulness, and curiosity towards nature, the universe, and different cultures and generations.
Contact information:
Matleena Jänis
matleena(at)janis.fi
www.matleenajanis.com