The Finnish documentary Steam of Life won first prize among the international entries at DocAviv film festival in Tel Aviv on May 11, 2010. Directed and filmed in saunas around Finland by Mika Hotakainen and Joonas Berghäll, the movie tells touching life stories of Finnish men. “In the sauna we are all just people”, says director Mika Hotakainen in an interview.
Mika Hotakainen came to present his unique film in Tel Aviv, which in addition to being the best of eleven competing international documentaries, also gained favour among the audience. Hotakainen shed light on the message of the film and its origins to the Israeli audience after the screenings, and at a reception held by the Embassy of Finland.
The sauna, one of Finland’s most famous symbols, presents Finnish men in a previously unseen way. The 81 minute-long documentary gives men a chance to speak, uncovered and uninterrupted. The most imaginative saunas serve as the films setting: one is built in a telephone booth, another in a tent, and yet another in an old harvester. In addition to the sauna culture and the emotional lives of Finnish men, the documentary also reveals Finland’s majestic landscapes.
Having studied directing of fiction movies in Helsinki and having previously directed documentaries, Hotakainen explains that in fiction movies the director conveys a message through a world he has constructed in his imagination. Documentaries, on the other hand, expose the message through the real, already existing world. The men in Steam of Life are unpretentious, and their stories true - some spontaneously shared during the filming. When the Tel Aviv audience wondered why younger, fit men had not been cast in the movie; Hotakainen responded that in the sauna Finnish men are comfortable with their own body.
The idea of the documentary was of course born in the sauna. While director Berghäll was at a public sauna in Tampere, he noticed that men were speaking openly and emotionally about their life, even difficult and sensitive topics. The director realized that in the sauna a Finnish man can talk and his neighbor listens.
Hotakainen said that he wanted to update the perception of Finnish men, who according to the common belief do not know how to talk, especially about their emotions. Perhaps this was true for the generation of men traumatized by wars, who adopted the harsh values necessary for emotional survival. Their children absorbed the taciturn attitude, but the generation that is now growing up has freed itself from the self-imposed silence. The documentary film updates the typical picture of the uncommunicative man: the Finnish man can also be sensitive and emotional.
The themes brought up repeatedly by the film’s men – love and death, birth and fatherhood, loneliness and friendship – are universal. The festival jury commented on how the movie disclosed human feelings which are similar all over the world, in Finland as well as in Israel.
In the sauna humanity and life present themselves as they are. Going into the sauna, one has to undress physically, and sauna itself is a place for an emotional undressing. Director Mika Hotakainen describes the sauna as a truly democratic place, where uniforms are left behind, and titles and credentials do not count for. In the sauna “we are all just people”, notes the director.
Israelis, who had filled up the auditorium, laughed, cried and even sweated with the sauna-going men. To the director’s surprise the Israeli audience asked many of the same questions as in Finland. Only one question would never be heard in Finland: Do Finnish men really go to the sauna, and on top of all naked??
During the filming the whole crew crammed into saunas and sometimes even took a steam while changing reels. Three years of filming and sauna-ing have not diminished the director’s enthusiasm for the sauna.
After the successful visit to Israel the director continued his trip to a film festival in Warsaw. He has already toured festivals with Steam of Life in Switzerland and the Hot Docs festival in Toronto, Canada.
“In Steam of Life I want to emphasize the necessity of love and friendship in having a happy life. Each one of us yearns for a companion with whom to share life’s joys and sorrows. That is probably what it is all about”, says Hotakainen. Steam of Life has earned its prize, and the Embassy celebrates the victory of Finnish men!
Text: Hilla Aurén
Photos: Oktober Oy
