Reindeerspotting - Escape From Santaland






2010
Joonas Neuvonen


A documentary portraying barely twenty years old Jani, a drug addict living in Finnish Rovaniemi -the city in Lapland otherwise known as "Home Of Santa".
Rovaniemi is a snow-white Hades of boredom. Jani is willing to do anything to escape the tedious, tawdry everyday greyish dullness of reality.
The film-maker, Joonas Neuvonen, studying filmmaking in India at the time of shooting (2003), returned to his home town Rovaniemi and caught up with some of his childhood friends.

The sordid and deeply disturbing details of this documentary about heavy drug-users are known to most, of course, and has previously been popularized in the film "Trainspotting" -which the title of this documentary alludes to. Also, Swedish Stefan Jarls' "Modstrilogin" ("They Call Us Misfits") is a predecessor, equally unflattering in it's portrayal of societys' outcasts.
Reindeerspotting is a Finnish equivalent, and an in a sense important update for todays' audiences, revealing that absolutely nothing has happened since Jarls' exposé was introduced over 40 years ago.

Neovonens' documentary, his first, has a curiously detached and yet very sympathetic view of his friend Jani, who is unfortunatley doomed and inevitably set for his own destruction. Jani is intelligent, warm and owns an affectionate charm that makes this all the more hard to watch.
The film is very well edited and the unflinching material, thanks to Neuvonens', literally, very up-close approach to his subject, is intense and gripping in a stark and sad way.
Jani was recently found dead in Phnom Penh (2010).


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