Letters to Katja

A new documentary from the Newcastle-on-Tyne collective, better known as the Amber Production Team. Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen travels back to Finland after a 23-year stay in England. She takes along her daughter Katja on this trip to rediscover her roots. It is an attempt to come to terms with the complex feelings around personal and national identity. In the beautifully crafted and stunning images of the seasons of Finland, Konttinen avoids the self-indulgent tone of many personal documentaries but instead explores her philosophical ideas about freedom and travelling: "Perhaps the freedom I wanted most, was the freedom not to know which journeys I might embark on in my life, and where it might take me. And like so many others, perhaps I had to leave in order to find just what I had left behind."