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Our alumni Mikko Kuparinen has received such recognition for his work from which many Finnish directors could not even dream of. Winning the Best Director award at an A-list festival is something to be proud of:

“This was a great acknowledgement not only for me, but for the whole film crew, and it shows that we have done something right.  It is wonderful to see that the film received such a fantastic start", Kuparinen expresses.

The award-winning film is 2 Nights till Morning, which is Kuparinen’s first directed English language film and his first written screenplay for feature length film. Naturally Kuparinen was quite nervous about the reception of the film. On Monday evening 7.9.2015 it became clear that these doubts were unnecessary when 2 Nights still Morning won the Best Director award at the Montreal World Film Festival. The festival is one of the A-listed film festivals in the world, which includes Cannes and Berlin.

2 Nights till Morning is a story about French woman and Finnish man whose paths cross with each other but they don't share a common language. The business trip romance gets an unexpected turn when volcanic eruption prevents all flights departing from the country. The film is starred by the Cannes winner Marie-Josée Croze and Mikko Nousiainen. 2 Nights till Morning will have its premiere in Finland in spring 2016.

The career of Kuparinen has been internationally recognized. His latest short films have all won awards at international film festivals and in 2013 his short film Sirocco placed him on the "10 directors to watch" list of four Nordic film magazines, and Sirocco also won the Grand Prix at the Odense Film Festival in Denmark.

Source: The Finnish Film Foundation