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The best films of 2021 were celebrated and awarded on Friday 6 May. The film winning the most awards was Compartment No. 6, directed by Juho Kuosmanen and produced by Jussi Rantamäki. The film is an international success and won altogether eight awards: best film, best director, best actress, best screenplay, best cinematography, best editing, best set design and best make-up design.

Guled & Nasra and The Blind Man Who Didn't Want to See Titanic both won two Jussi Awards. Other award-winning films included director Hanna-Leena Hauru’s Fucking with Nobody, 70 is just a number and Invisible Demons - Signs of Destruction, which won Best Documentary.

Exceptionally, the Best Short Film award went to student Emilia Hernesniemi's debut film Goodbye Tornio (Hei hei Tornio), which is her BA film for the Aalto University Department of Film. Hernesniemi is studying documentary film directing.

‘All of us want to belong to something, anything. And it takes time to find that place’, Hernesniemi said in her acceptance speech.

Goodbye Tornio is a beautiful short documentary about being young, leaving home and figuring it out on your own. The film follows the life of an 18-year-old Vilma on her last weekend in her hometown Tornio, a small place in Northern Finland. Vilma graduates from school, parties with her parents, siblings and friends and receives unwanted advice from emotional adults. All while she mentally prepares herself for the next step. Her dream is to move to Helsinki, a 10-hour drive away from her hometown. Goodbye Tornio is a vivid depiction of these rare moments in life when everything is just about to change for good.

‘Thank you Aalto University for giving me the freedom to make a film that felt good in my soul. Without confidence, it would be difficult to make something like that’, said Hernesniemi.

Script for the film is by Emilia Hernesniemi, and it is produced by Eveliina Mauno, filmed by Iiris Sjöblad, edited by Maija Karhula, sound by Saku Anttila and composed by Rolf Gustavson. The film is the BA work of all the artistically responsible students at the Department of Film ELO at Aalto University.

The film also won the Main Prize as well as the New Wave Award at the Love & Anarchy film festival in Helsinki, Finland last September.

Congratulations and good luck to all!