A man and his wife, who has suffered a stroke, go for a drive. The view through the windshield reveals a mundane journey through a wet, rainy world. The man talks about a dream he had the night before. Like a spell, his sparse words conjure up black-and-white images of a sunny day at the lake. Young, healthy and happy, the wife waves at the camera.
When Will the Day Break (2024, 6 min) is an experimental documentary film which uses dash cam videos, self-developed, partly hand-painted 16 mm black-and-white film and material that was screen-printed on 35 mm motion picture film. Sound design was done by Juho Luukkainen and the actor in the dream sequences is Jenni Kitti. Gallery screening of the work is an endless loop with many beginnings and no ending.
Sanna Liljander is a Finnish filmmaker (BA, Aalto University’s ELO) and visual artist (MFA, Academy of Fine Arts Helsinki), who works in the fields of documentary film and media art. In her art, Liljander likes to deal with people’s social emotions and relationships with each other, as well as the themes of letting go, longing and remembering. Her works have been screened widely at film festivals (in Finland e.g. Tampere FF, Midnight Sun FF, DocPoint, Love & Anarchy / internationally e.g. Edinburgh IFF, Odense IFF, Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg, Uppsala SFF) as well as in galleries, events and cinemas, and won various prizes, including the Risto Jarva Award. When Will the Day Break is the first work from a series that explores the effects of serious illness on close relationships – in other words, love in the face of hardship.