
Maija Blåfield’s documentary film The Fantastic (2020) will have its international premiere in the short and mid-length film competition at Visions du Réel International Film Festival, held from April 24 to May 2 in Nyon, Switzerland. The Fantastic was awarded as the best short film in the national competition of Tampere Film Festival, held from March 4–8.
The Fantastic is a film about imagination and encountering the unknown. Former North Koreans describe their experiences of watching forbidden foreign films. What did they imagine the world outside to be like on the basis of smuggled fiction films? The Fantastic is not a film about North Korea. The film reverses the set-up where westerners are peeping in on the everyday life of the closed-off state. In this film, it is the North Koreans who direct their curiosity at the outside world. In addition to documentary footage the film includes visual effects.
Maija Blåfield is an experimental documentary filmmaker from Helsinki, Finland. Her works often combine documentary and fiction in some way, exploring the fantastic side of our everyday life and digging up the stories from its events. She was granted the State Prize for the Media Arts in 2014 and in 2017, she was a nominee for Ars Fennica award for contemporary art. Her works have been screened in internatonal and national festivals, television, art museums and exhibitions.
Visions du Réel International Film Festival, April 24 – May 2 2020, Nyon, Switzerland
More information: Visions du Réel