An Interview with Tia Kouvo

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Tia Kouvo
© Janne Nykänen/YLE

VERDICT: Director Tia Kouvo talks to TFV about the process of making Finland’s Oscar submission ‘Family Time’.

Tia Kouvo has just returned from a trip to Los Angeles when she gets on Zoom to talk to TFV, and she apologizes upfront in case jet lag impacts the quality of our conversation (it doesn’t). She’s been busy, and for a very good reason: after a successful 2023 on the festival circuit, her feature debut Family Time is now Finland’s submission for the Best International Feature Film Oscar. “It was unexpected,” she says. “I assumed it would have happened last year. It was a fun surprise.”

It’s a nice achievement for a project whose core idea came to her some ten years ago, before she even enrolled in film school in Sweden (Ruben Östlund was one of her professors). “I even did a short film, my first year in Gothenburg, with Swedish actors, which has basically the same premise but at Easter. So that topic has been with me for a while.” Family Time also exists as a short film, featuring some of the same actors as the longer version, although Kouvo is keen to emphasize the idea for the feature came first.

“I kept pitching it while I was in film school, and then I decided to make the short as a test, to see if the concept would work and how I would direct the scenes and the actors. I had initially thought of only shooting test footage for my graduation project, but my cinematographer, Jesse Jalonen, said it would be a shame to not make a short that works on its own, so I wrote a proper script to make it more cohesive. It was also a good strategy to have the short as a proof of concept to show to financiers and producers.”

The original Finnish title, Mummola, refers to a single character (the grandmother Ella, or rather her house), while the international one highlights the whole ensemble. What was the rationale behind that?

“I like to think about the different languages when coming up with titles,” Kouvo explains. “Family Time is a good one because the film is about that, and it’s better than Mummola. But it’s a very fun word in Finnish, and a bit silly. I’m not sure it has an equivalent in any other language, and no one would think of using it for a film title, so I felt like I had to do it.”

Making the movie was a bit of a homecoming experience, in more ways than one. Though she maintains strong ties to Finland, Kouvo has been living in Gothenburg for years (in fact, while we both speak Swedish, her accent is closer to the standard variant, with occasional hints of her Finnish roots emerging). The house where Ella and her husband Lasse live was the real-life residence of the director’s grandparents in Lahti.

The latter element factored into the script, she reveals: “I wrote the scenes to take place in those specific rooms, and I knew exactly how to block the action and where to put the camera.” Was it always a given to shoot there? “No, the first thing I did was take Leena Uotila and Tom Wentzel, who play the grandparents, with me to shoot some scenes as a test. I had to figure out if it was a viable shooting location, and if I would be able to handle it emotionally.”

What were the alternatives? “They suggested a house closer to the Helsinki region, which would have been cheaper to shoot in, but it had the wrong floor plan. And although it’s not brought up that often in the film itself, Lahti is a part of me, and it contributes to the project being what it is. And as soon as the crew set foot in the house, everyone – the producers, Jesse, the production designer – agreed it was the perfect choice.”

Another strong element is the music, particularly a sequence featuring Ella and Lasse and set to Mamy Blue. How did that come about? “I can’t really explain my process, because it’s very intuitive,” Kouvo replies. “I just know which song will fit each scene, and most of them are already mentioned in the script. For that scene, I wanted a song from the 1970s, something they would have listened to when they were younger. So I went through a lot of tracks, and the Spanish version of Mamy Blue was just right. But in the end we had to use a different one. We were already mixing the film when we found out Sony couldn’t find the original contract, even though it’s their song. It was crazy.”

Before we go our separate ways and Kouvo returns to dealing with jet lag and Oscar campaigns, one final question: what’s next? “I’m writing my second feature, and we’re working on getting financing next year, with the aim of shooting in the summer of 2026. It’s a long process.”