August Joensalo’s The Rootless (2024, in featured image) and Azar Saiyar’s Solar Book (2024) will be screened at the International Ethnographic Film Festival Québec (FIFEQ), held in Montréal from May 7–11 2024. Both films are included in a short film screening taking place on Friday, 10 May 2024, at 8 p.m. in Cinéma Moderne.

In August Joensalo’s The Rootless, a desire to awaken the heritage of a sleeping culture and language their Karelian heritage between a grandfather and grandchild is interrupted by the grandfather’s sudden passing.

August Joensalo (b. 1993) is a Finland-based film director and writer interested in things such as memories, time, identity, embodiment and play. They use film and images for both creating relatable utopias for queers, as well as breaking the binaries of languages, bodies and identities. Their practice is focused on celebrating trans resilience, joy and existence.

Azar Saiyar’s Solar Book asks what remains and what gets lost, when a thing becomes a museum object? Many details have gone missing, but the museum objects of Satakunta Museum bear a strong presence of waters running next to it: things that the river and the sea have carried, things that were born, that live and once lived because of them and beside them.

Azar Saiyar is a Helsinki-based filmmaker and visual artist. She often uses archive materials and plays with images and words of collective memory to look towards ways of looking, remembering and storytelling. Her films have been screened at international film and media art festivals, galleries, exhibitions, museums and broadcast on television.

International Ethnographic Film Festival Québec (FIFEQ), 7–11 May 2024, Montréal, Canada

More information: FIFEQ

AV-arkki has promoted and distributed Finnish media art since 1989. AV-arkki’s promotional efforts have made the artists’ participation in this event possible. If you want to hear the latest news from our distribution, subscribe to our newsletter!