Le Saboteur (2022) by Anssi Kasitonni and Six Day Run (2013, featured image) are part of International Short Film Festival Winterthur this year. The festival is held in Winterthur, Switzerland from November 8-13 2022. Taanila’s short film is included in the “Sport ist Mord” screening, taking place on November 11 at 10:30 PM in Cinema Maxx 2. Kasitonni’s Le Saboteur is screened on Saturday, November 12, at 11 PM in Kino Cameo, as part of “Dismissed” screening.

Mika Taanila’s Six Day Run is a film about spiritual exercise on a one-mile paved loop in a park. The Six Day Run is one of the most extreme individual endurance sports dating back to the 1870s. The film is based loosely on The Book of Genesis in the Bible (Gen. 1:1 – 2:3).

Mika Taanila (s. 1965) is a filmmaker and visual artist based in Helsinki, Finland. He works with documentaries, experimental film and visual arts. Human engineering, utopias, failures and man-machines are recurring themes in his films and installations. Taanila’s works have been shown at major international group shows, such as Venice Biennale (Nordic Pavilion 2017), Aichi Triennale (2013), dOCUMENTA (2012), Shanghai Biennale (2006), Berlin Biennale (2004), Manifesta (2002) and Istanbul Biennial (2001). Solo shows include the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki (2013–14), Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (2013), TENT, Rotterdam (2013) and Galleria Heino, Helsinki (2010). Taanila’s short films have been screened altogether at more than 300 international film festivals and special events. In 2015, Taanila was awarded with the prestigious Ars Fennica Award, the biggest Finnish art award.

In Le Saboteur an ex-saboteur gets back in the game and every trick will be exposed! A short action film about the joint adventure of indie filmmaking – with all the special effects.

Anssi Kasitonni is a skateboarder and an award-winning artist from Sahalahti, Finland. He has worked in music, drawing and sculpture, but to many of his fans, the most beloved of his works are the short films he makes at his own farm. The films deal with age-old questions related to morality, love, death, generation gaps, sexuality and, of course, submarines. The ideas are epic, the films decidedly homespun. His movies create their own world that tells us something essential about ours. Kasitonni won the esteemed Ars Fennica Award in 2011.

Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur, 8-13 November 2022, Winterthur, Switzerland.

More information: Winterthur ISFF.

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.