The First Programme Announcement of the Tampere Film Festival 2025 – Local Screening Collaborations

The 55th Tampere Film Festival will be held next spring, 5–9 March 2025. Alongside the competition screenings, the festival will also feature diverse thematic programmes. The first announcement highlights interesting collaborations with local actors, including short film screenings and related discussion events.

The collaboration that started at the 2024 festival with the Tampere University’s Democracy Research Network will continue next year. This time, democracy is examined and defended from the perspective of care in the thematic programme Radical Care. The programme includes two short film screenings and a discussion organised by the Democracy Research Network. In the films of the screenings, care that helps sustain democracy is approached from perspectives such as unemployment, loneliness, and education.

Among the films featured in Radical Care is The Mass of Men (United Kingdom, 2012), which won the Grand Prix at the 2013 Tampere Film Festival. Directed by Gabriel Gauchet, the film tells the story of 55-year-old unemployed Richard, who faces challenges navigating the bureaucracy of unemployment services. A slightly older production is represented by the 1995 winner of the Best Documentary award, The Smell of Burning Ants (USA, 1994) by Jay Rosenblatt, which explores the growing pains of men in a society shaped by fear, power, and shame.

New forms of care will be presented in Jesús Minchón Rodicio, Marta Aguilella Antolí, and Arnau Belloc Lorite’s film Ei, Temi (Spain, 2024), in which a robot named “Temi” is brought in to keep 85-year-old Paquita, who is lonely, company. From Finland, Pena’s Special Hauling (Finland, 2023) by Anssi Kasitonni, will also be screened. The film tells the story of a truck driver who persistently continues driving despite his illness.

Underground Culture and World Premieres

The festival will feature Tampere’s underground culture in the Tampere UG screening, curated by a local subculture activist Sami Ylipihlaja. In addition to the screening, a discussion event related to the theme will be held on Wednesday of the festival week, followed by a party at the Vastavirta Club.

All the films in the Tampere UG screening are produced for the film festival and will have their world premieres. The screening will feature, among others, the documentary films Pyynikin aikamatkat (Finland, 2024), Ruudun takaa – valoviikkojen viritys (Finland, 2024), and Tikkutehdas DIY (Finland, 2025).

Pyynikin aikamatkat, directed by Mikko Vares, tells the story of a former infectious disease hospital’s transformation into an urban community space in downtown Tampere. Ruudun takaa – valoviikkojen viritys by Kaarikoirat ry follows a long-established skateboarding association taking over an empty commercial space near Tampere railway station and turning it into part of the Ruudun takaa art event. Tikkutehdas DIY, created from archival material by Static Films, is a skateboarding film about the DIY skatepark at the Tikkutehdas factory in Tampere from a decade ago.

The Sale of Serial Cards Begins

Along with this programme release, the Tampere Film Festival’s Christmas campaign will begin. During this period, serial cards for the 2025 festival will be sold at discounted Early Bird prices. The Early Bird prices will be available from 2 December 2024, to 6 January 2025, via Lippu.fi’s online shop and ticket outlets.

The competition selections for the 2025 festival will be announced at the end of January. The full programme of the festival will be released, and individual tickets will go on sale on 11 February 2025.

Read more about the festival’s ticket sales on our website’s Ticket page.