About a month ago I made some sort of history. Our film A Light That Never Goes Out (premiered in Cannes in 2025) was nominated for ten Finnish Film Awards (Jussi), and won SEVEN of them, and three of them were personally handed to me: best direction, best screenplay and best music.

The other awards were best sound design (Juuso Oksala & Yngve Leidulv Sætre), best breakthrough role (Anna Rosaliina Kauno), best lead role (Samuel Kujala) – and on top of it all, best film (producer Ilona Tolmunen).

This doesn’t make any sense, and I’m feeling confused but happy. I’m a debut filmmaker, and it’s quite rare to get this kind of recognition for a film which really wasn’t a big hit, and was seen by very few people in the theaters. Getting the film made was quite a stormy ride – I wrote a long post about all of it on Patreon – so standing on that stage felt even more unlikely.

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Me giving an inspirational speech on the stage (photo: Lucas Ekblad)

The last time someone in Finland received three personal awards was Aki Kaurismäki, but his third award was for best film, and I’m not sure if anyone in the whole world has ever won this unholy trinity of script, direction and music. Anyway, I’m still shocked and grateful.

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Ilona was given the best film award by the president of Finland. (Photo: Lucas Ekblad)

It’s a full circle: Beat was originally created for writing this film. I was struggling with a horrible creative block and some unfortunate PTSD symptoms, but I wanted to do something around writing anyway, and that gave birth to Beat. The first versions were extremely buggy and hardly worked, but the app quickly found an enthusiastic user base despite its flaws, and without all of you, the app wouldn’t be what it is now.

Thank you for all of your support!
Lauri-Matti