Festival Predictions

2022 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Anna Paavilainen’s Kikka!

Published on November 23, 2021

With every fest edition there has been a rich component dedicated to music – celluloid go hand and hand with musical notes hence the music biopic are often welcomed. Most are known entities but if Anna Paavilainen‘s sophomore feature is included here, or Rotterdam or the Berlinale there’ll need to be some context needed to fully get into Kikka!. Starring Sara Melleri in a decade-spanning, head strong personality portrait, the Finnish pop singer was compared to Samantha Fox. Produced by Daniel Kuitunen (who brought a pair of Finn-tastic side-splitting shorts to the fest in Fucking Bunnies and Are You Hungry?), the project will be release domestically in Finland in February.

Gist: This is a biopic on pop singer Kikka, a.k.a. Kirsi Hannele Viilonen, who passed away in 2005 at just 41 years old.

Production Co./Producers: Komeetta’s Daniel Kuitunen, Kaisla Viitala.

Prediction: WORLD CINEMA DRAMATIC COMPETITION.

U.S. Distributor: Rights Available.(domestic, international).

Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include 1976 (Manuela Martelli), Godland (Hlynur Pálmason), Corsage (Marie Kreutzer), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen).