One of the more interesting voices in Finnish filmmaking, Pirjo Honkasalo had been away from the fiction feature scene since the 2013 premiere of Concrete Night. Over a decade later, she is back behind the camera with Orenda, selected as part of the Big Screen Competition at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. It should appeal to aficionados of Nordic arthouse cinema, and get an additional international boost via the casting of Alma Pöysti, the star of Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves.
Whereas Concrete Night was a citybound thriller, Orenda – named after an invisible force and life spirit – takes us to a more secluded locale, as shown already in the opening credits through a tracking shot across the rocky shores of a remote island in the Baltic archipelago. This is where opera singer Nora (Pöysti) arrives, struggling with recent loss. She comes into contact with Natalia (Pirkko Saisio, the director’s partner in art and life), a temperamental priest who enjoys the lifestyle of a hermit. Though seemingly unconnected at first, the two women share a bond that goes back decades, and gradually come to terms with it.
Pöysti, one of the greats of contemporary Nordic stage and screen acting, has left an increasingly noteworthy mark on the European film scene ever since her breakthrough performance in Zaida Bergroth’s Tove (2020). Saisio, on the other hand, comes from the world of writing, being an acclaimed novelist as well as Honkasalo’s collaborator on Concrete Night, which was based on her book of the same name.
The role of Natalia is her debut as a leading actress in a feature-length project, after a handful of supporting parts (most notably as Finland’s first female president, Tarja Halonen, in the 2009 film Prime Minister) and the narration of Honkasalo’s 2004 documentary The 3 Rooms of Melancholia. It’s a revelatory performance, as her more subdued approach progressively makes way for an irreverent energy holding its own against Pöysti’s more emotionally charged characterization, and the two women become two sides of the same spiritually tormented coin.
Aided by cinematographer Max Smeds (working on a feature film for the first time), Honkasalo captures the awe-inspiring and simultaneously terrifying beauty of the archipelago, with nature becoming a third protagonist much like in 2024’s Stormskerry Maja (shot on the Åland islands), its surreal charm a welcome antidote to the somewhat drab big city aesthetics. Away from the outside world, the two leads embark on an emotional journey facilitated by the primal grandness of their surroundings.
The environment also feeds the film’s more enigmatic side, as an early instance of cryptic spiritual language sets the tone for a narrative that also grapples with the tenets of faith and how different aspects of belief keep evolving in today’s society. This is the section where Saisio’s writing is particularly sharp, albeit partly lost in translation: subtitles don’t fully do justice to a discussion about divine personhood, whose wit is rooted in the Finnish language having only one pronoun – hän – which covers the entire spectrum of the third person singular. The deities may be undefined, but their presence informs the clarity of a quietly powerful piece of human drama.
Director: Pirjo Honkasalo
Screenwriter: Pirkko Saisio
Cast: Alma Pöysti, Pirkko Saisio, Luca Leino, Hannu-Pekka Björkman, Tambet Tuisk, Mikko Kauppila
Producers: Misha Jaari, Mark Lwoff
Cinematography: Max Smeds
Production Design: Tiiu-Ann Pello
Costume Design: Jaanus Vahtra
Music: Sanna Salmenkallio, Elias Salmenkallio
Sound: Jan Alvermark
Production company: Bufo
World sales: The Yellow Affair
Venue: International Film Festival Rotterdam (Big Screen Competition)
In Finnish, English
117 minutes
