Koko Production produces creative documentaries and media art that are strong in content and visuality.
Koko Production was founded in 2017 by Mina Laamo - a visual artist with two decades of experience working in film.
A three-screen documentary installation Four Trick Pony premiered in Turku Art Museum in 2020-2021, and exhibited in Helsinki 2024. Sorrow Tamers, Mina Laamo’s feature documentary, had an international premier at Thessaloniki Documentary Festival in 2022. Modern Times Review called the film "a magnificent and outstanding hybrid of documentary and artwork".
At the moment, the production company has a documentary film and media art work entitled A Nature Documentary on Dying Birds in development. A creative documentary In the Borderland directed by Elina Hyvärinen will be released in cinemas in Spring 2025.
A Nature Documentary on Dying Birds
(Luontodokumentti kuolevista linnuista)
IN DEVELOPMENT / FINLAND / CREATIVE DOCUMENTARY AND INSTALLATION / 60-75’
A Nature Documentary on Dying Birds delves into feathers of the birds, the human mind and emotions amidst the sixth extinction.
More than 3 billion birds have been lost across the EU and North America in the last half-century. In my lifetime. A Nature Documentary on Dying Birds explores the human mind and emotions in change in a setting when the whole society should take a new course in terms of nature, use of its resources and its protection.
The film conjoins observational documentary, interviews; real, dead and imaginary birds; dead and living nature; archive materials; film and digital materials and an abundant soundscape. The material is just as diverse as nature should be.
Why is our relationship with nature so unnatural? Do we really think that gene banks and frozen zoos will save us from the collapse of biodiversity? Should our approach to the world, environment and ourselves be fundamentally different?
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SCRIPTWRITER & DIRECTOR
Mina Laamo
CINEMATOGRAPHERS
Cristal Alakoski
Jarkko M. Virtanen
EDITOR
Tuuli Kuittinen
SOUND DESIGN
Janne Laine
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Tuuli Gröhn
COMMUNITY AND EVENT MANAGER
Riitta Ryhtä
PRODUCER AND IMPACT PRODUCER
Sini Hormio
PRODUCER
Mina Laamo
PRODUCTION COMPANY
Koko Production
SUPPORTED BY
KONEEN SÄÄTIÖ
AVEK
TJNK
KMS
SELECTED TO BE PART OF
The Climate Story Lab Nordic
2023-2024
In the Borderland
Rajalla
COMING IN 2025 / FINLAND / CREATIVE DOCUMENTARY / 73’
The waves of change hit a small town on the Russian border in Eastern Finland, far away from the front line, when the Russian attack on Ukraine in 2022 turned the European worldview upside down.
The iron curtain lowers again on the Finno-Russian border and the project of opening an international border crossing point collapsed. The fruitful cooperation that has been established with the neighbour country over decades is wasted in an instant. Local newspaper editors, business owners, members of the city council, border officials and other people in the area are faced both with a new kind of future that is unknown to them and the heavy historical baggage of the borderland.
The film follows the everyday life of heartwarming people in Parikkala, who find themselves between the old and new era, when world politics escalate and change the life of the town and its people as well their thoughts on the border.
COMING TO CINEMAS IN FINLAND IN MARCH 2025!
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Distribution in Finland: PEK Pirkanmaan elokuvakeskus
International Festival Distribution: Finnish Film Foundation
SCRIPTWRITER & DIRECTOR
Elina Hyvärinen
DIRECTOR OF CINEMATOGRAPHY
Jarkko M. Virtanen
EDITOR
Nikke Bagge
SOUND DESIGN
Janne Laine
ORIGINAL MUSIC
Emil Sana
PRODUCER
Mina Laamo
PRODUCTION COMPANY
Koko Production
IN CO-OPERATION WITH
Yle / Jenny Westergård
FILM WAS SUPPORTED BY
SES
AVEK
Karelian Cultural Fund
DIRECTOR'S WORK WAS SUPPORTED BY
TAIKE Southeast Finland
SKR South Karelia
Sorrow Tamers
(Surunkesyttäjät)
2022 / FINLAND / CREATIVE DOCUMENTARY / 66’
An art-house-documentary film about individuals, who have decided to face the sorrow as it exists to them. Sorrow always shakes up the life we used to know, and everything is changed. Changed how? You do not know, unless you fearlessly step into the world of grief and, without fearing the change, step out in due course as a new, transformed version of yourself.
Life is learning how to let go before death, the ultimate momentum of letting go.
Shot on film, the short episodes of individual stories form a larger story of the finite nature of life and the intrinsic need of human beings to reach out to each other, even when it is not possible.
"An outstanding piece of direct cinema turned art cinema, offering a glimpse into the human soul at the moment of suffering."
"Showing the urgent need to know our feelings better is one of the many qualities of this magnificent film best described as a hybrid of documentary and artwork. But don’t be misled. While the tag «art cinema» conventionally signifies a certain degree of generalised abstraction, this film is an outstanding document precisely because it intertwines with art. The purely imaginary, «artistic» parts of the film further add to and enforce the potentials of direct cinema and directly contribute to the capacity of this film to show something that we did not even know that can be seen. It helps us know our souls better."
Read more: Modern Times Review
IN CINEMAS IN FINLAND 2022!
Distribution in Finland: PEK Pirkanmaan elokuvakeskus
International Festival Distribution: Finnish Film Foundation
SCRIPTWRITER &
DIRECTOR
Mina Laamo
DIRECTOR OF CINEMATOGRAPHY
Päivi Kettunen F.S.C.
EDITOR
Tuuli Kuittinen F.C.E.
SOUND DESIGN
Janne Laine
CREATIVE PRODUCER
Atte Karttunen
PRODUCER
Mina Laamo
PRODUCTION COMPANY
Koko Production
IN CO-OPERATION WITH
Yle / Jenny Westergård
SUPPORTED BY
SES
AVEK
KMS
TAIKE
SELECTED TO BE PART OF
Twelve for the Future
2018-2019
Effects used in the film from Freesound.org under the Creative Commons 0 License (CC0 1.0) and the following effects under the Attribution License (CC BY 3.0): • thatjeffcarter: We Listen - melody / https://freesound.org/people/thatjeffcarter/sounds/141865/ • OSFX: Standing above a reactor / https://freesound.org/people/OSFX/sounds/420538/ • Mat397: Polyflute pad / https://freesound.org/people/Mat397/sounds/485078/ • striptheband: Ambient Groove 002 / https://freesound.org/people/striptheband/sounds/52020/ • YleArkisto: An aeroplane, passenger plane, propeller aircfaft, DC-3, Dakota, taxing, taking off / https://freesound.org/people/YleArkisto/sounds/256049/
Four Trick Pony
2020 / FINLAND / DOCUMENTARY INSTALLATION / ENDLESS
Four Trick Pony is a video installation constructed of the personal film and video archives of two documentarists. It consists of four parts, each associated with a prime number. Together they generate endlessly new combinations. Unique at every moment, it repeats the same only every 12th day.
The work uncouples itself from the bonds of documentary cinema, the tradition of narrativity, and the logic of causality.
Prominent elements in the footage are experientiality, transitoriness, moment, attention, observation and awakening. The initial impetus for the work was the artists’ realisation of the ever-present demand for stories. Four Trick Pony is their way of exploring what happens when narrative is rejected. Do we always need a story, or can its fundamental purpose – reaching out emotionally to other people – be served also without a narrative? What alternative ways are there to tell about the world we live in?
The exhibitions:
Laterna Magica, Helsinki, Finland
15 Aug 2024 – 7 Sep 2024
Turku Art Museum, Turku, Finland
27 Nov 2020 – 21 Mar 2021
International distribution: AV-arkki
SCRIPTWRITERS &
DIRECTORS
Pia Andell
Mina Laamo
SOUND DESIGN
Janne Laine
PRODUCERS
Pia Andell
Mina Laamo
PRODUCTION COMPANIES
Koko Production
Of Course My Films
SUPPORTED BY
AVEK
TAIKE
TAIKE Uudenmaan taidetoimikunta
DISTRIBUTION
AV-arkki
and
production companies
