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Video Interview: Teemu Niukkanen & Antti Toivonen – Are You Hungry? (Short Film) 2020 Sundance Film Festival

Making their second Park City trip in just as many outings with 2020’s Are You Hungry? following in the footsteps of Fucking Bunnies (2017), the tandem of director Teemu Niukkanen and screenwriter Antti Toivonen embrace the quirkier aspects of what make humans tick by essentially … focusing on how they click. The Finns have embraced what could be described as a noir in plain sight social-class humor dressed with sight gag humor and sonic pulses that remind audiences that it is more than the character set that are being prodded. An overbearing mother and her mute teenage son are front and pants splitting center in what tonally reminds of the hapless and ways of being characters in Östlund cinema. I sat down with the filmmakers to discuss this well-traveled short at the 2020 edition of the Sundance Film Festival.


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 Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).

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