By Jonathan Monovich.
I used to spend a lot of time behind windows looking at a nearby river and the people walking by. Little by little, the windows became my screen. At this time, the only way I was able to survive Karkkila was to spend as much time as I could in the nature.”
–Emmanuelle Felce
For decades, Aki Kaurismäki’s films have touched audiences. His minimalist films, and their humanist poignancy, have helped define the Finnish auteur’s oeuvre. Like Yasujirō Ozu, Robert Bresson, and Ingmar Bergman, Kaurismäki’s films possess a transcendental quality. This is achieved through a recurring examination of the everyday human struggle. Routinely, it is the almighty presence of hope, and the eventual discovery of connection/love, that saves the troubled characters of Kaurismäki’s films from their disappointments. There is also a cinematic continuity of moviegoing by Kaurismäki’s characters. Most recently, in Fallen Leaves (2023), it is Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die (2019)that is shared on the big screen during a date night gone wrong. There are also scenes set in movie theaters in Kaurismäki’s Calamari Union (1985), Shadows in Paradise (1986), The Match Facotry Girl (1990), Drifting Clouds (1996), and Lights in the Dusk (2006). Uncoincidentally, Jarmusch’s characters are also seen at the movie theater in his films Permanent Vacation (1980), Stranger Than Paradise (1984), and Paterson (2016). Both Kaurismäki and Jarmusch clearly place great value in the theatrical experience. Their passion for cinema and similarly deadpan styles have established a longstanding friendship. This relationship is explored in Veljko Vidak and Emmanuelle Felce’s documentary Cinéma Laika (2023).
Cinéma Laika chronicles the construction of Karkkila, Finland’s, first movie theater (Kino Laika), though Vidak and Felce intentionally make the town and its people the primary focus rather than the movie theater itself. As revered critic Amy Taubin says in Cinéma Laika “great art is not about what you put in but what you remove.” Vidak and Felce very considerately recognize the essence of small-town Karkkila is in its serene location and its familial community. With the addition of Kino Laika, Karkkila’s communal bond is furthered, signaling that films themselves and the act of seeing them in a theater can help facilitate amplified meaning in life. Vidak and Felce’s existential experience in Karkkila brings about a philosophical examination of the questions “what is cinema” and “what is a movie theater.”
An ode to André Bazin and Aki Kaurismäki, Cinéma Laika provides meaningful responses to these questions while also presenting a perceptive outlook on Karkkila’s special relationship with the natural world. Channeling the cinematography of Yûharu Atsut, Sven Nykvist, and Timo Salminen, and the vignette-like conversations of Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes (2003), Cinéma Laika strives in its stillness. Vidak and Felce’s homage to Kaurismäki and Jarmusch is of the utmost respect, capturing that the spirit of their films is in their restraint. Vidak and Felce are also very thoughtful in similarly finding beauty in life’s mundanity. There is no excess in Cinéma Laika, just a sincere appreciation for an exemplary way of life defined by decency and humility. Over a Zoom call between Chicago and Paris, I had the pleasure of discussing both the style and substance of Cinéma Laika with Vidak and Felce. Cinéma Laika continues to make its way around the world via The Match Factory.
Veljko, you trained as a painter before becoming a filmmaker. There is a painter-like quality in Cinéma Laika in the way that you frame the compositions of your shots. How do you approach your subjects for filming vs. painting?
Veljko Vidak (VV): I studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, Croatia, before moving to Paris. There, I lived as a painter and regularly visited the Cinémathèque française. I trained my eye through painting, so when I compose a shot, I always think in terms of visual composition. Aki Kaurismäki says, “it takes the same amount of time to put the camera in the right and wrong places” [laughs]. My sense for that “right place” comes from painting, but it was Paris that shaped me into a filmmaker. In Paris, cinema is so deeply woven into daily life that everything starts to feel like a cinematic experience. With the money I earned from selling paintings, I used it to study film in Paris and produce my first short film. Many filmmakers began as painters—Wim Wenders, Robert Bresson, Akira Kurosawa, and David Lynch, to name just a few. As Bresson said, “the picture should express something before the actor expresses themself.” Expression always begins with framing.
Emmanuelle, do you share a similar background?
Emmanuelle Felce (EF): I studied acting, dance and communication in Paris. Then, I worked in the music field as a production manager. I wrote songs for a long time, so transitioning to writing stories was very natural. I, too, am a cinephile. When Veljko asked me to write a story for a short he wanted to shoot in Finland, it was kind of a revelation. He only had one line of the story for the short and asked me to write the rest. We shot together in Finland for this first short titled Kasetti (2016). It played at the Black Night international Film festival in Estonia. Apart from writing, I also worked on music, sound, and post-production. That’s how we started working together. Since then, Veljko and I write, edit, and produce together. It’s a collaboration, and we each bring what we know.
Cinema and France are inseparable. You revisit André Bazin’s question, “what is cinema,” in Cinéma Laika. It’s clear that you were thinking about Bazin’s essays “The Ontology of the Photographic Image” and “The Evolution of the Language of Cinema”and his interests in realism, depth of focus, minimal cuts, and consciousness. Was Bazin’s theory an important part of your film studies education?
VV: I was already a cinephile in Croatia before moving to Paris. My art school was near Zagreb’s cinematheque. It was there that I encountered many great films and began to develop a deeper appreciation for cinema. In Paris, that connection became even stronger. There, cinema isn’t just an art form; it’s an important part of French culture. Before I knew about Bazin’s theory, I was already thinking in a Bazinian way. His ideas gave shape to intuitions I already held, offering a framework for understanding cinema and how to approach it. We included references to Bazin in Cinéma Laika to show that our work belongs to a broader cinematic conversation. We feel a strong connection to this particular lineage of film history, and there are certain key moments/ideas that we keep returning to. With every shot and every camera movement, I constantly ask myself “what is cinema?” If a shot lacks meaning, and in some way doesn’t respond to that question, then it has no reason to be in the film. Through the mise-en-scène, compositions, and minimal cutting, there is obvious Bazinian logic in Cinéma Laika. We are happy we can call our film Bazinian, but it’s more so how we see cinema. This question, “what is cinema”, also goes along with our question “what is a movie theater?” Understanding cinema and why it should be seen on the big screen is the theme of our film. Cinéma Laika is not a theorist film, though. It’s a real experience of cinema.
Bertolucci’s The Dreamers (2003) and Henri Langlois: Phantom of the Cinémathèque (2004) are two films that similarly capture the importance of the filmgoing experience and the logic of the Cinémathèque française. I was fortunate to visit the Cinémathèque française as an undergrad and would love to return one day. I imagine the people of Karkkila treat Kino Laika like their very own cinematheque. How does the programming work at Kino Laika, and is Aki Kaurismäki directly involved in selecting the films?
VV: As Kino Laika was getting ready to open, the question of programming came up. Aki was, of course, involved, but the main programming director is Mika Lätti. Given the small size of the town, the cinema needed to serve a wider social role. The program brings together arthouse films, classic films, children’s films, commercial titles, and Finnish cinema, offering something for the whole Karkkila community. Even though he was working on Fallen Leaves at the time, Aki was particularly involved in the programming of classics. He selected iconic films like Tokyo Story (1953), The 400 Blows (1959), and Bicycle Thieves (1948). He wanted to preserve the spirit of a true cine-club. I suggested someone should introduce them, and Aki said, “why don’t you do it?” So, I introduced a classic film series every Tuesday afternoon for ten weeks.
EF: Aki trusts Mika with Kino Laika’s programming. Aki is there for special events, and sometimes you can even see him behind the bar, making coffee or pouring beer. When Veljko was there for the cine-classics, people really enjoyed it. They would plan their weeks around seeing these films. It was very interesting as it was the first time a lot of these people even tried talking about cinema. It’s very difficult for Finnish people to express themselves. Aki’s films are like documentaries in the way they convey that.
In Cinéma Laika, Anna and Kaisa Karjalainen, of the musical duo Maustetytöt, discuss this Finnish struggle of expression in a comical way.
VV: After a screening in New York, someone from the audience asked me, “how did you make a film where you were able to get Finnish people to talk?” It was a big challenge [laughs]. We lived in Karkkila for one year to be able to establish these relationships. When we shot with Maustetytöt for Cinéma Laika, for fun, Aki said “I will be your assistant!” After that, Aki decided to put them in Fallen Leaves. He said “they don’t talk much. I want to put them in my movie.” Emmanuelle and I also ended up as extras in the scene where Maustetytöt performs in Fallen Leaves. Now, Maustetytöt has an international following. Thanks to Fallen Leaves and Cinéma Laika being made at the same time, we had some nice moments of collaboration.
In Cinéma Laika, Kaurismäki opens up about his teenage years, running from cine-club to cine-club to see four films a day. He recalls how The Mother and the Whore (1973) and a double bill of Nanook of the North (1922) and L’Age D’or (1930) blew his mind. I connected with this as will other cinephiles. What were some of your transformative experiences at the movie theater?
VV: I grew up in a small village in the Croatian countryside, not unlike Karkkila.
There was only one cinema in my hometown. Some of the first films I ever saw were Rear Window (1954) and the original King Kong (1933). My first real encounter with cinephilia came in the early 90s, when I discovered the films of Jim Jarmusch and Aki Kaurismäki. Their independent spirit felt incredibly fresh and opened up a new way of thinking about film. It’s really nice for me that both of them are now connected to Cinéma Laika. They were the catalysts for my earliest passion for cinema. I still vividly remember watching Paris, Texas (1984) in a communal hall in my village, projected from a transportable film projector. It was one of those cinematic experiences that stays with you for a lifetime.
EF: I used to rent a lot through video clubs. I’m so sad our kids won’t have the same experience. There was something truly special about it. As a young dancer, I was immersed in music for hours every day. I was naturally drawn to musicals, especially Jacques Demy’s films and the great American musicals of the 1950s. As I grew older, I became interested in the films of Louis Malle and Sergio Leone. Then, I was completely struck by the work of Luis Buñuel. His freedom of spirit, and the way he confronts us with the darker sides of human nature, through a subtle mix of provocation and dark humor, really left a mark on me. His collaborations with Jean-Claude Carrière, in particular, feel incredibly intelligent and organic. I also had a very rich inner world, made up of dreams and memories, so when I discovered David Lynch’s work, it also resonated deeply.
VV: [Turns camera to show bookshelf of DVDs] As you can see, here are Kaurismäki’s films, Jarmusch, Wenders, Almodóvar, Fellini, Lynch, Tarkovsky, Dreyer, Bresson etc. Of course we have more, but we keep these ones here as our essentials. We have them here as a reference for the way we want to approach cinema. There is so much going on, yet we still try to live like we are at the Cinémathèque.
EF: There is a lot of visual chaos in the world, so you have to keep disciplined to clean your eyes and your soul!
Like you, I am also an avid physical media collector and find myself revisiting a lot of the classics. In Cinéma Laika, one of the Karkkila residents recognizes that Kaurismäki “knows his one-liners.” Kaurismäki doesn’t often do interviews, but the few available are filled with great one-liners.
VV: After I knew Aki better, I realized the way he speaks is very simple and straightforward. Aki knows that it will sound funny. He wants it to sound funny, but it’s also true. I used to laugh a lot more when I watched Aki’s films. I still laugh, but now it is in a different way. You can’t laugh at a guy losing his job. It’s a tragedy, yet somehow the way Aki does it, you’re not laughing at the comedy. Rather, you’re touched by the humanity of how he represents the subject matter. When I watch Aki’s films now, they’re much more serious and melancholic than funny. They are touching, and that’s why we laugh. It’s because the films are so human.
How did you first meet Aki Kaurismäki?
VV: After I finished film school and moved to Berlin, my intense cinephelia continued. I would watch up to four films a day on my projector. During that year, I saw 600-700 films. It was then that I rediscovered Kaurismäki’s films. I watched all of them in one week. I was so impressed that I said “everything is there. You don’t need film school. You can understand the basics of filmmaking from Aki’s films!” The next day, it was the beginning of the Berlin Film Festival. I saw someone sitting outside a restaurant. The terrace was closed because it was very cold. There were a lot of empty chairs, but there was one man sitting alone. It was Aki! I sat next to him and started having a conversation. I said “Mr. Kaurismaki, in the last week, I saw all of your films. I think I now understand all that is fundamental about cinema.” This was my first line [laughs]. Intrigued, Aki said “oh, really. What’s that?” My response was “first, I can see through your films that cinema is a language and your language is pure and simple. But, this would just be an empty stylistic frame if you didn’t include the second element, which is humanism. An art form with humanism—that’s cinema.” He was really touched by this and said “ok, but these are just films.” I took it further and said “maybe you don’t understand what you did in these films, but I do, and many other people around the world do. This is more important than what you think about your films.” That’s how our friendship began. The next year, Emmanuelle and I visited him at his Midnight Sun Film Festival. We talked for three days/nights. When you talk with Finnish people, you really need to have something to say. Aki gets very angry with journalists who have a superficial approach. Cinéma Laika wouldn’t exist if I wasn’t able to establish this relationship with Aki. He’s also a big cinephile. He comes from a time where people were still able to talk about the important points in the history of cinema. Aki doesn’t follow contemporary cinema as much, but he still knows what’s happening.
Emmanuelle, can you speak about composing Cinéma Laika’s music? Your decision to sing acapella at the end mirrors the isolation of Karkkila. Was that the intention?
EF: Life in Karkkila was hard in its own way. I was working on the shooting while taking care of our newborn. That might have felt manageable in France, where I have friends and family to rely on, but being alone with a baby in the countryside of a foreign country made everything much more psychologically and physically intense. The cultural distance made life more difficult. Finns tend to be quite reserved, and it’s not easy to create connections when you first arrive. When I was home, I used to spend a lot of time behind windows looking at a nearby river and the people walking by. Little by little, the windows became my screen. At this time, the only way I was able to survive Karkkila was to spend as much time as I could in the nature. I used to live by the sea, but I had never experienced nature in this way before. The nature in Karkkila is incredibly powerful. I came to feel that nature speaks an international language. No matter where you go, the types of trees might change, but the feeling remains familiar. It may sound mystical, but I truly felt something in the ground there. I can say that Karkkila has a special energy. Many artists live there, and you can sense that. I wrote and composed several songs while I was there, but “La Ville Dort” is the one I chose for the ending of Cinéma Laika. I composed it with my voice only, while walking in the forest. The title of the song means “the town sleeps.” It’s really a poem about Karkkila, its people, and the surrounding nature. I decided to keep it acappella because each time we added an instrument, the song lost its power. I think that keeping the organic aspect of the voice alone truly reflected the essence of the life there.
Speaking of music, Jarmusch and Kaurismäki also share a love for rock and roll. You include a live rock and roll performance in Cinéma Laika. Apart from being homage to Kaurismäki’s films, can you speak about the importance of music in the film?
EF: We recorded on reel-to-reel tapes in Karkkila. It was a very old-school studio with amplifiers from the 50s and 60s. They were the same model Elvis Presley used. In Karkkila, people are still living in the sixties through their music and their cars. Everything has a strong rockabilly vibe. It’s really fascinating. Just like Aki doesn’t put any “plastic” in his movies, the people of Karkkila don’t either.
VV: There really is a love for old objects in Karkkila. This can be seen in Aki’s films, but it’s not just Aki. It’s the whole town. Karkkila’s people have a love for the design of old cars, especially Cadillacs. We drove an El Dorado Cadillac for some time and Aki said “this is too modern.” It was from 1974 [laughs]. Aki’s 1962 Cadillac is the same one from his film Ariel (1988). He’s very proud of it. It’s very nice that you can experience and enjoy this slow-paced life there. It’s like Back to the Future (1985)in a way. In Cinéma Laika we really focused on the town’s form of life and expressed their way of treating time. I wanted to make a joke in beginning of the film where a title card would say “somewhere between America and Japan” [laughs]. On the exterior, Karkkila has the American look of 1960s rockabilly culture. The town’s attitude is actually more aligned with Japanese minimalism, though.
Was the song that Jim Jarmusch and Amy Taubin were listening to on the tape recorder in Cinéma Laika sung by Toshitake Shinohara—the Japanese musician/translator in the film? Also, was that scene supposed to be a reference to Eszter Balint listening to “I Put a Spell on You” on the tape recorder in Stranger Than Paradise?
VV: Yes, the song is by Toshitake Shinohara. The idea with the tape recorder was to connect two separate scenes through music using the tape recorder as the linking object. I remember that object from Stranger Than Paradise, but the use of it wasn’t directly inspired by the film. I like cinephile references that travel from one film to another, creating a sense of continuity. When I spoke with Jarmusch while preparing the scene, I told him to imagine it as if it were a scene from Coffee and Cigarettes.
By the end of the film, you speak of your connection with nature in Karkkila and consider a movie theater a place to “recreate a vison of the world.” The similarities between Finnish and Japanese cultures are also recognized. The discussed connection to the natural world is very clear in Japanese cinema. A recent example is Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Evil Does Not Exist (2023). How has your time in Karkkila changed your outlook on nature?
EF: It totally changed me. I really understood the strong connection. Now, rather than just walking in the forest, we need to go deep into the forest. Finnish people are very connected to nature because they are dependent on it. The winter is so powerful in Finland. You can’t ignore it. You become a part of it, therefore you must respect it and take it seriously. I really saw myself changing and becoming physically stronger. To live there, you have to be strong. Now, I understand people who go to the forest and hug trees. At first, I thought that was something cute. Now, I really understand why they do it.
VV: When someone wants to be close to nature and goes to the park to take photos, you start to understand that this is a form of nature tourism. It’s a way of using nature for amusement rather than an element. After living on a horse farm and cutting your own wood to make a fire in the fireplace, you start to see nature differently. Our relationship with nature became much more profound. That’s why we say it at the end of the film. If there is a similarly profound relationship with cinema, there will be no danger of cinema surviving. When there is profundity, then something can really change.
What do you envision for the future of cinema?
We believe the future of cinema lies in its ability to create spaces for reflection. There’s still room for cinema that invites us to think. In a world dominated by negativity and rapid consumption, cinema has the power to offer an alternative—a space where we can reconnect with ourselves, with others, and with the world around us. Films can be a bridge, helping us understand reality more deeply. They remain a powerful tool for connection in a time where everything feels more fragmented. One of the most important ways to ensure cinema continues to thrive is by sharing its knowledge with younger generations. Passing on the art of understanding cinema is essential if we want to keep exploring who we are, through films that demand a high level of artistic quality and creativity. That’s how we’ll keep cinema alive and relevant in the future.
Jonathan Monovich is a Chicago-based writer and a regular contributor for Film International. His writing has also been featured in Film Matters, Bright Lights Film Journal, and PopMatters.