Director of Reindeerspotting Joonas Neuvonen nominated at OpenCity Film Festival

Joonas Neuvonen, the director of the hard-hitting Finnish documentary film Reindeerspotting, has been nominated for the Best Emerging Director at the Open City London Documentary Film Festival 16.-19 June.

London´s largest documentary festival includes 140 films and its acclaimed jury consists of renowned filmmakers such as Cristi Pulu and Pawel Pawlikowski.

Reindeerspotting is a shockingly candid view into the world of Finnish drug culture and caused a big stir in its home country when it first came out in the spring of 2010. The film follows Jani, part of a gang of young men living in Rovaniemi, high in the Arctic Circle, dabbling in petty crime and hard drugs. Jani has lost five years of his life and two fingers to his debtors. He wants to leave Lapland and dreams of Paris, the land of unrestricted Subotex.

A few years back the film-maker Joonas Neuvonen was living on welfare and using drugs on a daily basis. He then began to film his friends and their lives. The film takes viewers on a dramatic and tragic journey without ever forgetting its main character's humanity.

The inaugural Open City London Documentary Festival is a public-minded celebration of the best in documentary filmmaking and has a diverse programme organised into strands such as Obsessions and World Visions. The festival presents a variety of award-winning masterpieces and UK premieres, workshops, live music. The main venues of the festival are the Prince Charles Cinema and University College London.

"It's great to have a new festival in London bringing together practitioners and a broad public audience. At its best documentary film goes beyond the familiar and the cliché to reveal the mystery, the poetry, the ambiguity beneath" says, Pawel Pawlikowski, multi-BAFTA award winning director and Open City judge.

The Film screens Friday 17th June at 6.50pm in Bloomsbury.

More information:
OpenCity