The documentary style of semitruths and shock reportage started by Mondo Cane and culminated in Farewell Africa dominated the field of commercial documentary film in the 1960s and 70s – or, more precisely, was the first commercially successful documentary subgenre since the silent era. These ”mondo films” with their mishmash-style documentation of the world would find their topics from exotic places such as the Far East or rainforests, but also the Nordic countries, and after the success of Sweden: Heaven and Hell (1968), it was time for crazy Finland.

Relegated to a filler programme in Italian TV after a short theatrical run, Mondo Finlandia is one of the great rediscoveries of the 2020s and a more affectionate and endearing representative of an exploitative subgenre.

The midnight sun seems to have disarmed the sensationalist crew from their most ill-disposed attitudes, even though they have plenty to marvel at with tech student dipping, reindeer castration, a graveyard orgy and free love at the Arctic Circle.

“Reindeer without Laplanders exist only in zoos – but Laplanders without reindeer do not exist.”

MONDO FINLANDIA
DOVE NON È PECCATO
Italia 1970
Regi: Antonio Colantuoni
Medv: Virpi Miettinen, Armi Ratia, Peter von Bagh
Spilletid: 89 min
Språk: Italiensk (engelsk tekst)
Aldersgrense: 15 år
Omtale: Petteri Kalliomäki

Trivia
One scene includes film historian and director Peter von Bagh, who Giorgia Moll (known from films of Godard and Mankiewicz) chances upon for an interview at the Sibelius Monument and the trash chute of the Helsinki Surgical Hospital.