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Mika Taanila: Upon hearing about winning the Underground Spirit Award, I felt like I was 15 again

23.07.2024.

On the third day of the 31st European Film Festival Palić, a press conference was held at the Grand Terrace on Monday, July 22. Speakers included this year’s Underground Spirit Award laureate, Mika Taanila; actor Danny Ronaldo; programmers Victor Paz Morandeira and Frank Albers; director David Boaretto; caricature exhibition author, Nemanja Kosanović; and book author and film critic, Nenad Dukić.

Mika Taanila, this year's winner of the Underground Spirit Award, shared his thoughts on receiving the honor: "It was a very touching moment for me when I received the email notifying me of the award. My first impression was that I felt like I was 14 or 15 again. I grew up listening to punk rock music in the late seventies and early eighties in Helsinki. I started a band with a group of friends, and we learned about art through this music and about DIY culture. The Underground Spirit Award embodies that culture for me."

Danny Ronaldo, the main actor in the film "The Magnet Man," which was shown the previous evening in the Official Selection at the Summer Stage, made his film debut with this production. He shared his experience: "Director Gust Van den Berghe had been looking for circus decor, and since I have a circus company, he came to see the show. Then he came again and again, until one day he told me he wanted me for the main role. At first, I said it was not possible because I needed an audience and couldn't act for the camera; for me, a performance is an act of love between the audience and the performer. But I was happy in the end. Film is also like a circus: you have new settings every day in a different place, you have trailers where you are like a family. I quickly felt at home."

Victor Paz Morandeira, programmer of Galicia in Focus, commented on the significant international rise and recognition of films from this Spanish region: About 15 years ago, the director Oliver Laxe had his film You All Are Captains in the Quinzaine des Cinéastes program in Cannes, which in a way that opened the door for other filmmakers from this region to step forward and try to push the boundaries of film language. It is difficult to find a common denominator for all these films, but I would say that they all try to introduce certain innovations. These two sections, feature-length and short films, clearly indicate the excellent health of Galician cinema today".

On the fourth day of the festival, Tuesday, July 23, at the Summer Stage in Palić, When the Light Breaks by Runar Runarsson will be screened in the Official Selection at 9 p.m., followed by Celebration by Bruno Ankovića at 11 p.m. In the Parallels and Encounters program at the Abazija Cinema in Palić, the schedule includes the films Bosnian Pot by Pavo Marinković at 6 p.m. and In Five and a Half Love Stories in an Apartment in Vilnius, Lithuania by Tomas Vengris at 8 p.m.

The European Film Festival Palić has been supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia, the Provincial Secretariat for Culture, Public Information and Relations with Religious Communities, the City of Subotica, the European Union through the Creative Europe MEDIA program, as well as numerous friends and media partners.