Finnish filmmaker Helmi Donner (she/they) is the director of THE LIGHTNING ROD (MATALAPAINE), which appears on T-Port courtesy of our partners at  European Film Promotion’s Future Frames.

We caught up with the director, who recently graduated from film school, to chat about their creative process and why they hate the idea of working alone.

Professional Subscribers can watch THE LIGHTNING ROD, as well as the rest of the EFP Future Frames’ films here on T-Port. If you’re a film industry professional who would like to find out more about subscribing, read more here. 

Hi Helmi! Could you introduce yourself in a few lines? 

I am Helmi, a director and writer from Helsinki, Finland. I graduated from Aalto University ELO Film School a year ago and up to this moment I’ve worked with school short film productions, I think I’ve made four shorts during my studies. I have also worked as a director’s assistant and sourced archive material for several features. At the moment I’m developing my first feature film.

Why did you choose film as your medium? Is it your only artistic outlet or do you have others?

I fell in love with filmmaking because it’s visual writing. As a medium it allows me to be very precise and freely associative at the same time. I’m also very fascinated by the way people do artistic collaboration in a film, it would be my nightmare to always work alone.

Do you have a philosophy behind your filmmaking?

Filmmaking for me is such a strong tool and I want to be very mindful of how I use it – how I show people and dynamics. The most important thing for me is to be honest. I consider myself a feminist and I hope that it shows in my cinematic gaze.

If you could watch one film on a loop forever, what would it be? 

In my early teens, me and my friend watched Baz Luhrmann’s ROMEO + JULIET every weekend. I don’t know if I could go back to that routine, but I still enjoy that film quite a bit.

Tell us about your film that’s on T-Port. What is it about? How did you choose to tell its story?  

The film is about internalized violence and a culture of silence that is passed from one generation to another. It’s a story about a young mother who expects support and safety from her grandmother but instead receives hostility and denial. I wanted to tell a story about this sadly very Finnish subject: intimate partner violence and manipulation, but do it from an intergenerational perspective and focus on the dynamic between two women instead of the couple.

What challenges have you encountered while embarking on your film project? How did you seek to overcome them? 

Filmmaking is always complicated one way or another. With this one, there were a lot of practical challenges: a tiny location, executing the storm with a small budget, shooting at nighttime etc. We had a great artistic team of HOD’s and our artistic planning was very precise. My aim was to try to facilitate a lot of conversation between departments to create a shared understanding of the artistic vision.

Can you share the most important lessons you learned through the process of making your film?

The biggest lesson with this film was that you can and you should play in the edit. I mean that the script is a tool for making material and when you have the material, it’s time to look and listen to what works in the film’s language.

If you could go back in time to pre-production and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be? 

Take takes with different tempo.