The true story behind Finnish director Klaus Harö's fifth feature film Never Alone (Nie Allein), which received the Screen Internatonal Best Pitch Award at December's Baltic Event in Tallinn, has fascinated the director and producer Ilkka Matila alike ever since their childhoods.
However, as a way of engratiating itself to the Germans, the Finnish State Police began registering foreign Jewish refugees and finally selected eight to be deported to the death camps. A prominent member of the Jewish community in Finland, Abraham Stiller was the only one to trying to act as a mediator for the asylum seekers and protest against the State Police's actions.
Matila and Harö's previous collaboration on his 2005 film Mother Of Mine had also been an "untold story" focusing in that instance on the war children sent from Finland to Sweden during the Second World War. That film went on to become the most popular Finnish film in Sweden and was sold to over 30 territories.
To date, Matila has close to € 2m in place for the €4m production which is being structured as a Finnish-Swedish-Latvian co-production with either Austrian or German partners. Backing has already been granted by Nordisk Film Distribution (for the Scandinavian rights), Nordic Film & TV Fund, Finnish Film Foundation and Finnish public broadcaster YLE TV1.
While establishing shots would be done in Helsinki, the rest of the shoot – including interiors which make up 20% of the shoot - could be based in Riga and thus access the recently established tax rebate scheme from the Riga Film Fund.
"I am really looking for partners who feel that this project is an important story to be told and are not only looking at the commercial potential," Matila concludes.