Finland here we come

The Midnight Sun Film Festival will be held for the 39th time on June 12-16. The traditional silent film concerts will be held on three festival nights this time around.

The Dodge Brothers and Neil Brand accompany FW Murnau's 1930 'City Girl'
The Dodge Brothers and Neil Brand accompany FW Murnau’s 1930 ‘City Girl’

On Sodankylä’s Friday night (14 June 2024), the audience will be dazzled by masterful F.W. Murnau’s City Girl (1930), which completed the director’s Hollywood career, which began with the classic Sunrise (1927). The film will be accompanied by the music of pianist Neil Brand, whose career in music for silent films has lasted for nearly 40 years, and the band The Dodge Brothers from the United Kingdom. In Murnau’s work, the romance between a Chicago waitress and a young farmer takes us to the wheat fields of Oregon, where the Americana-tinged bluegrass music of The Dodge Brothers with their banjos and washboards fits perfectly. One of the members of the band is Mark Kermode, one of the most famous film critics in his country, who will also host a Masterclass in Sodankylä.