Pablo Larrain’s No picked up the Audience Award at Helsinki’s Love & Anarchy Festival.

A record 300 film professionals, including 60 international sales agents, buyers, festival programmers and press, attended the 2nd Finnish Film Affair, organised by the Helsinki International Film Festival-Love & Anarchy, which ended yesterday September 29.

The three-day event featured 30 Finnish recent and upcoming films, eight works-in-progress and six projects in development including Dome Karukoski’s Heart of a Lion and Pirjo Honkasalo’s Concrete Night.

Meanwhile, the Love & Anarchy Festival attracted a record 58,000 admissions for 470 screenings and special events, including the Finnish Film Week and the Finnish Film Affair.

Chilean director Pablo Larraín’s No, with Gael Garcia Bernal as an ad executive who comes up with a campaign to defeat Pinochet in Chile’s 1988 referendum, won the Audience Award 2013.

A selection of festival entries will now tour the Finnish cities of Turku, Jyväskylä, Kuopion Vilimit, Tampere and Hankoo.

“During the last couple of years Finland has got a real movie industry, created by young directors willing to take risks, with their own resources on the line. Some are inspired by the American studio films of the 1970s, which were previously despised - the variety is great, local market share really good, and there is more to come,” said artistic director Pekka Lanerva.

“Finnish filmmakers seem to aim at product, which is more than local and regional, but has an international aspect to it; you feel an energy in the industry, which is very professionally advanced, and open to attracting foreign talent as a service sector, with viable options, although there is no tax rebate,” observed senior vp acquisitions-develoment Chris Paton, of the Netherlands’ Fortissimo Films.

“In the last couple of years Finnish cinema has become more interesting, as the producers are understanding the commercial language,” explained attendee ceo Michael Werner, of Sweden’s newly-established international sales agency Eyewell, which has Finnish Fisher King Production’s 12x44-minute television series and upcoming feature Nymphs in its catalogue.

So far licensed to German and French-speaking Europe, Italy, former Yogoslavia, Russia-CIS and French Canada, the series will be further marketed at the upcoming MIPCOM.

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