Erkka Nissinen‘s Monday (2026) (featured image) and Martta Tuomaala‘s Am I Calling You at a Bad Time? (2025) have been selected for the 20th Flatpack Festival. Both films are screened in the Short Film Competition: Growing Up. The festival takes place from May 8–16, 2026 in Birmingham, the United Kingdom.

It’s Monday. A man wakes up. A journalist wants to hear the truth.

Erkka Nissinen gained an MFA degree from the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, Finland, in 2001. During the 2011 Rotterdam Art Fair, Nissinen won the acclaimed Illy Prize. In 2013, he was awarded the AVEK Prize for media art. Nissinen represented Finland with Nathaniel Mellors at the 2017 Venice Biennale.

X is growing up in the 1990s. As a child she makes prank calls and gets her first job in telemarketing as a teenager. Office smells, heavy breathers, and meaningless greetings follow her from one workplace to another. Through archival material and amateur video footage, the narrative reflects X’s actions as a faceless subject playing with her voice as a commercialised asset.

Martta Tuomaala is a Helsinki-based visual artist (MA) who works between documentary and fiction. She works with various forms of film, video and installation. Over the past decade she has mainly focused on work culture and workers’ issues. Tuomaala has worked in many low-income fields and her own experiences have inspired her to create projects that emphasize workers’ rights.

Flatpack Festival
May 8–16, 2026
Birmingham, the United Kingdom

More information: Flatpack Festival – Short Film Competition: Growing Up