Lordi and Hanna appear at Cannes Film Festival

by Ilari Karhapää 90 views

The Finnish film industry is making it big in this week's Cannes Film Festival. Both Lordi and Hanna Pakarinen are in town to promote films they are involved in, Dark Floors and Musta jää (Black ice). Both have also performed in a special Suomi Bar built on the boulevard by the sea where other Finnish acts will perform during the festival.

The main project for the Finnish movie industry this year is the movie Dark floors, a horror movie featuring Lordi. It takes place in a hospital where a broken elevator will take a father and his autistic daughter to the wrong floor – a monster land. The budget is around four million Euros and the filming starts in the end of May. Pete Riski will direct. Expectations are high as the film avoids the three main things that have kept the Finnish films so far in the minority: language, lack of stars and subject. This film will be done in English, it features well known stars and belongs to a genre very popular in the USA and Asia.

Lordi has of course caused a media fuss wherever they go followed by bodyguards to keep too eager fans away. The Finnish "Suomi Night" culminated with a Lordi performance, but already on Thursday the American movie industry magazine Variety featured Lordi on its cover with the slogan "The fear is here."

Hanna Pakarinen flew in to promote the movie Musta jää or Black Ice. She performed the film’s title song in the Suomi Bar where the waitresses wear Lordi’s Bitch t-shirts. Also the Ganes were there, a group that plays the Hurriganes in the forthcoming film about this successful Finnish rock band of the 1970’s. Also Joulupukki or Santa Claus and Rölli troll are in Cannes promoting their forthcoming films.