This will be the 67th edition of the famous festival, while ISFF Oberhausen is scheduled to run May 1 – 10, 2021. Nina Kurtela’s Dear Aki will screen in the International Online Competition, a new category established this year, which will feature 40 films from 30 countries. More than half of the films in the category have been directed by female directors, while for 14 of the films, including Dear Aki, the screening at Oberhausen will be their world premiere. 

Dear Aki is a 14-minute experimental film, a visual meditation of sorts about the creation of fictional landscapes in the real world, created as a Kreativni sindikat production. Nina Kurtela directed the film, co-wrote the screenplay along with Jasna Jasna Žmak, co-edited it together with Hrvoslava Brkušić, and she is also the film’s narrator.  

The film is structured as a series of fictional letters addressed to celebrated Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki. The visual-narrative essay tackles the issues of identity, nationality, territory, space and home, while the opposition of shots depicting the north and south serve the director to re-examine the possibilities of creating new, imaginary spaces within existing landscapes.