The Beauty of Errors, a documentary from Finnish filmmaker Jukka Kärkkäinen (The Punk Syndrome), will celebrate its international premiere at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival on Thursday. Its tag line: “Documentary Goes Shakespeare,” a reference to William Shakespeare‘s The Comedy of Errors.
The film about family, belonging and love arrives in Greece having just won two awards at Finland’s Tampere Film Festival, where it world premiered: the main prize in the national competition for films over 30 minutes and the Risto Jarva Prize.
“It is no secret that when Tero became a single father 15 years ago, he had no clue about babies or how to raise a child,” reads a synopsis for Kärkkäinen’s seventh film, set in a small Finnish village. Over the years, he does what he can to teach his son Henri how to become a strong, independent man, including how to use shotguns and repair cars. “However, when Henri one day wants to settle with his girlfriend and asks his father to hand over the house to them, Tero realizes that he is the one being dependent. Loneliness is just around the corner, and he has to stand by himself while facing the universal fear of losing love.”
Written and directed by Kärkkäinen, The Beauty of Errors features cinematography by Toni Pasanen. The editor is Otto Heikola. The doc comes from producer Juha Löppönen and executive producer Sami Jahnukainen, both of Mouka Filmi. The co-producers are Ove Rishøj Jensen and Magnus Gertten of Auto Images, Carsten Aanonsen of Indie Film, and Lisa Nyed of Film i Skåne.
The Beauty of Errors was made with production support by the Finnish Film Foundation, AVEK, Church Media Fund, the Swedish Film Institute, the Norwegian Film Institute and Nordisk Film & TV Fond, as well as in collaboration with YLE, ARTE G.E.I.E. and SVT. Rise and Shine is handling international sales.
“After a period of artistic emptiness, I found my way back to filmmaking through Henri, his father Tero, and their family, and it felt like coming home,” says Kärkkäinen. “By following their everyday lives until Henri turns 18, I wanted to rediscover the beauty in small things, the sense of belonging I had partly lost, and the strength it takes to move through pain. I look at them with the eyes of an observer, and slowly but surely, this emptiness I felt started to be filled only with love.”
THR can now exclusively reveal the international trailer, with English subtitles, for the doc. Psychology, a shotgun, a kiss, and talk about death await you. And so do explosives, bad language, and a not-so-close shave. To be or not to be. That may be the question. But no question, you should check out the trailer for The Beauty of Errors here.
