Screwed (originally titled Pihalla) is a brand-new, must-see Finnish drama, where seventeen-year-old Miku and Elias (Mikko Kauppila and Valtteri Lehtinen) find themselves – and each other – during an idyllic summer in the Finnish countryside. Love is not as easy as it seems.
Seventeen year old Miku (Kauppila) is “just some dude,” devoid of personality, at least according to his brother. After a party-turned-rager that destroys his home, Miku is doomed to spend the rest of the summer at his family cottage, where both his parents avoid dealing with their own budding relationship crisis. But the calm of the Finnish countryside takes a turn for something strange when Miku meets Elias (Lehtinen). The boys have nothing in common except for their age and dysfunctional families. But something is pulling them together.
Miku finds himself in the eye of the storm as Elias forces him to deal with his repressed sexuality, all the while Miku’s parents marriage heads towards destruction. Elias has his own baggage to deal with and finds it easier to just discard Miku from his life instead of starting another broken romance. Miku, though, has had enough. For once, he decided that it’s time for him to take charge of his own life.
In talking about the film, co-writer/director Nils-Erik Ekblom said “I wanted to make a movie where a character being gay is unremarkable. I think we’re heading towards a Finnish society where, between consenting adults, it won’t matter who you love or who you sleep with. I wanted to marry that thought with a traditional coming of age narrative. That’s where this project got started, but there’s more to this movie.”
He went on to say “What you’re looking at is a time capsule. Me and my writing partner Tom (Tom Norrgrann, the film’s co-writer) took the past decade of our lives and wrote it into the movie. Our friends and families are present in every character and every event. If something didn’t ring true to us it wouldn’t stay in the script. If something was too absurd or hurtful to seem real, it absolutely had to be in the script.
We wanted to show an uncensored version of the daily life of a young Finn on the brink of adulthood, who also happens to be gay. That character is Miku, and his journey is set towards a backdrop of Finnish nature and two dysfunctional families.
The characters in Screwed are crass, blunt and self centered. They’re misunderstood, careless and lost. But they’re also passionate, ultimately loving and endearing. Our cast greeted these characters with open arms and cherished them. Every day there was a storm of creativity on set and I believe that’s what we managed to capture in this film. I couldn’t be more proud of what we have accomplished. I hope you enjoy watching our film.”
Check out the trailer for Screwed below along with a few select images and make sure to pre-order your copy here. It comes to DVD and VOD on March 27th.
