I Am a River
Piiroinen Heidi
Inspired by Pablo Neruda’s Book of Questions—a collection of lyrical, unanswerable poems that playfully interrogate nature, life, and the cosmos—the film weaves poetic inquiry with visual abstraction through the rarely used mordançage technique. Its veil-like formations evoke the fluid, fragile, ever-changing essence of rivers, suggesting they are living entities, much like us.
Production Year
2026
Duration
00:06:10
Tyyppi
Asiasana
Original Title
I Am a River
English Title
I Am a River
Dialogue
No
Sound
Yes
Cast
Heidi Piiroinen (Author), Heidi Piiroinen (Cinematographer), Heidi Piiroinen (Editor), Heidi Piiroinen (Producer), PALO Art Production (Producer), Heidi Piiroinen (Script), Heidi Piiroinen (Copyright Holder), AVEK (Funder), HelScan (Funder), Taiteen keskustoimikunta (Funder), Light Cone (Funder), Alfred Kordelinin säätiö (Funder), Filmwerkstaden (Funder), Salla Hämäläinen (Sound Design)
Press Photos
Heidi Piiroinen (b. 1978, Tampere) is a Helsinki-based visual artist working across photography, experimental film, and installation. With a strong background in documentary storytelling and press photography, her practice has increasingly shifted toward more intimate, process-based works that explore emotional memory, invisibility, and suppressed states of being. Piiroinen’s work involves analogue techniques like mordançage and 16mm film, combined with text, archival material, and community collaboration. Her recent solo exhibition In Case of Loss / sitten haluaisin laulaa (Rauma Art Museum, 2024) wove together diary entries, collaborative writing, soundscapes, moving images and performance to create an immersive, room-based narrative. She is a recipient of the State Award for Public Information, the Patricia Seppälä Foundation Photojournalism Award, and multiple grants from Taike, Kone Foundation, and others. Her current practice aims to carve out space for vulnerability, silence, and listening through both image and experience.