Elian Mikkola

Ina, an introverted 11-year-old immigrant, finds herself captivated by Petra, a new classmate coming from the same country as her. Faced with the newcomer’s indifference towards her, Ina embarks on a desperate quest for connection in a world oscillating between dream and reality.

A queer couple moves into an abandoned family house during the first year of the pandemic. Something in the house, neither dead nor alive, helps them transition to a new era of self-awareness.

Laura is a dancer who works as a bike courier to make ends meet. Over the course of one shift, as her patience is tested and her energy depletes, Laura learns she has the fortitude to survive the odds against her.

Damien, a 16-year old swimmer, clashes with his Coach at practice. In parallel, Damien plays with his younger brother at a hotel waterslide, but his erratic behaviour shows something hidden beneath the surface. Bleach explores the confusing moments following trauma and abuse, and how big each small step can be.

As a patient, a captive in her own inner life, Magdaleena succesfully resists her psychiatrist. The confrontation, filmed in split screen, is less an actual case study than a metaphorical story, based on the filmmaker's personal experience of being looked at as the 'other' because they lives and performs outside the binary gender norm.

A single window frame; a portal. As the circular nature of time begins to reveal itself, a new decade begins.

Tracing back a lost identity, hidden in the forests of an abandoned war zone. How does trauma get carried on from a generation to another and is there a way to stop the cycle? The filmmaker tries to understand how to heal from the pressures of the past by searching for their grandmother's childhood home. Taking the journey with their parents, they find themselves in a village located in the old Karelia, now a part of Russia.

A woman, once captured in a 35mm image, waits to be seen. Light shapes the image and creates a new life form in this dance of pixels on analog skin. By working with different facets of the cinematic apparatus, this film is a transfeminist analysis of a single film frame.

MAN MADE, a repurposed narrative of a boy who gets introduced to the wonders of life by a beautiful shining trumpet. But the struggle to be oneself has only begun. Utilizing found 16mm footage and both digital and analog manipulation techniques, Mikkola pierces conventional masculinity with a transformative queer gaze.