Midnight Sun Film Festival (Finnish: Sodankylän elokuvajuhlat) is an annual five-day film festival in Sodankylä, Finland. The festival usually takes place in the second week of June. One of the main themes of the festival is to show films without a break all day and night long, while the sun keeps on shining.
The Midnight Sun Film Festival is non-competitive. The program consists mostly from the films of the main guests, 20–30 modern movies from all parts of the world, contemporary Finnish films and cinema classics, some of which are usually presented as "master classes" by various film theory experts. Typically the festival introduces 4–5 directors from younger generations who are also guests at the festival. In recent years, the yearly attendance has been between 15,000 and 25,000.
The festival was first arranged in 1986 and the first international director guests were Samuel Fuller, Jonathan Demme, Bertrand Tavernier and Jean-Pierre Gorin. Later on it has hosted some of the biggest names in cinema, such as Jim Jarmusch, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Roger Corman, Terry Gilliam, Francis Ford Coppola, Abbas Kiarostami and Miloš Forman.
Here follows the list of guests who have attended the festival since its first edition:
1986: Samuel Fuller, Jonathan Demme, Bertrand Tavernier, Jean-Pierre Gorin
1987: Michael Powell, Jacques Demy, Jim Jarmusch, D. A. Pennebaker, Juliet Berto, Thelma Schoonmaker
1988: Monte Hellman, Paul Schrader, Dušan Makavejev, Aleksei German, Krzysztof Zanussi, Ali Özgentürk, Helle Ryslinge
1989: Paul Morrissey, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Otar Ioseliani, John Berry, Vadim Abrashitov, Idrissa Ouedraogo
1990: Richard Fleischer, Manoel de Oliveira, Ettore Scola, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Octávio Bezerra
1991: Andre De Toth, Laslo Benedek, Alberto Lattuada, Jean-Charles Tacchella, Agnès Varda, Chantal Akerman, Enzo Serafini, Etienne Chatiliez
1992: Roger Corman, Claude Chabrol, Jan Troell
1993: Joseph H. Lewis, Dino Risi, Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Julio Medem
1994: Robert Wise, Mario Monicelli, Luis García Berlanga, Stanley Donen, John Sayles
1995: Robert Parrish, Agnieszka Holland, Maud Linder, Richard Price, Fridrik Thór Fridriksson, Victor Erice
1996: Jean Dréville, Claude Sautet, Danièle Dubroux, Robert Boyle, Doris Dörrie
1997: Gianni Amelio, Vincent Sherman, Jerzy Skolimowski, István Szabó, Costas Ferris
1998: Youssef Chahine, Terry Gilliam, Robby Müller, Stefan Jarl, Wim Wenders, Leonard Kastle
1999: Edgardo Cozarinsky, Costa-Gavras, Francesco Rosi, Angela Winkler, Murali Nair
2000: Bob Rafelson, Paolo Taviani, Ivan Passer, Shinji Aoyama
2001: Freddie Francis, Sergio Sollima, Jerry Schatzberg, Agnès Jaoui
2002: Francis Ford Coppola, Miklós Jancsó, Fernando Solanas, Denys Arcand, Luce Vigo
2003: Irvin Kershner, Emir Kusturica, Jean Rouch, Matti Kassila
2004: Val Guest, Nanni Moretti, Marlen Khutsiev, Wolfgang Becker, Jörn Donner
2005: Roy Ward Baker, Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne, Yeşim Ustaoğlu, Juan Pablo Rebella, Pablo Stoll, Hans Weingartner
2006: Gian Vittorio Baldi, Carroll Ballard, Andrei Smirnov, Jafar Panahi, Isabelle Stever, Mercedes Álvarez, Jasmine Trinca
2007: Abbas Kiarostami, Claude Goretta, Vittorio De Seta, Giuseppe Bertolucci, Amos Gitai, Elia Suleiman, Pascale Ferran, Detlev Buck
2008: Miloš Forman, Andrei Konchalovsky, Seymour Cassel, Lasse Pöysti, Veiko Õunpuu
2009: John Boorman, Robert Guédiguian, Fatih Akin, Samira Makhmalbaf, Sergey Dvortsevoy, Andreas Dresen, Markku Lehmuskallio & Anastasia Lapsui
2010: Pedro Costa, Terence Davies, Bahman Ghobadi, Vesa-Matti Loiri, Samuel Maoz
2011: Michael Chapman, Souleymane Cissé, Atom Egoyan, Apichatpong Weerasethakul
2012: Harriet Andersson, Joe Dante, Alan Rudolph, Béla Tarr
2013: Philip Kaufman, Marco Bellochio, Claire Denis, Cristian Mungiu, Jem Cohen, Ahmet Boyacioglu
2014: Olivier Assayas, Pawel Pawlikowski, Alain Bergala, Alice Rohrwacher
2015: Malgorzata Szumowska, Miguel Gomes, Mike Leigh, Whit Stillman, Christian Petzold, Nils Malmros
Co-founder of the festival, Peter von Bagh released a 4-hour documentary based on footage from panel discussions titled Sodankylä Forever. It features clips of various filmmakers discussing the broader impact of films and filmmaking within history and culture. Some of the directors that appear in the documentary include, Miloš Forman, Ivan Passer, Ettore Scola, Michael Powell, Abbas Kiarostami, Jafar Panahi, Elia Suleiman, Francis Ford Coppola, John Sayles, Samuel Fuller, Bob Rafelson and Jonathan Demme.
