s elling films is not the most glamorous side of the film business, but Kirsi Tykkyläinen (a name that is easier to pronounce than it looks: try saying ticka-lye-nen) doesn´t just represent Finnish films internationally: she stars in them, too. Not all the time, mind you. Only for friends, like Aki Kaurismäki, the Finnish film-maker best-known internationally (although, in an irony that Aki himself would surely relish, he has never been much of a box-office draw at home).

Tykkyläinen took one of the lead roles in Kaurismäki´s 1994 Cannes entry, Pida huivista kinni, Tatiana (Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatiana), playing a Russian woman from Alma Ata who spoke no Finnish (half of that was accurate: she speaks fluent Russian) and who ends up on the road with a couple of gloomy Finns (played by Kaurismäki regulars Matti Pellonpaa and Mato Valtonen).

Auli Mantila's violent thriller, Geography of Fear.

Given the director´s approach to film-making (write quickly; speak, move and film slowly), it was not an especially cheerful film, unlike Tykkyläinen herself who, in her two decades representing Finnish films at festivals and markets around the world, is renowned as one of the international film circuit´s most cheerful presences.

And she is on especially sparkling form, shortly after returning from Aki´s annual Christmas party. It´s not just the party spirit either. Tykkyläinen - whose day job is as head of the international department at the Finnish Film Foundation - is feeling upbeat because 1999 has been an outstanding year for Finnish films locally. Almost two million of the 7-million tickets sold in Finnish cinemas were bought by people who wanted to see Finnish films, a market share not seen since the forties.

What is more, 2000 promises to be every bit as good. There will be six Finnish premieres, both locally and internationally, during the shelf-life of this issue of Preview (January-February), and most of the films will be from the new generation of younger film-makers who have brought the local film industry bang up to date.

That last bit makes Tykkyläinen particularly happy. “It´s a generation whose work has been developed as a result of two or three years´ efforts by the Foundation,” she says, with a justified degree of corporate pride. “They´re all well-educated; they have up-to-date attitudes; and they are working with producers who are as adventurous as they are.”

Suburban social drama Bad Luck Love

This year will see around a dozen new Finnish films made by both established production companies - including that headed by sixties icon Jörn Dönner - and relative newcomers (see list on right). Especially interesting among those due out in the next couple of months from an international point of view, reckons Tykkyläinen, are three films: one from a first-time director; the other two from film-makers, one male, one female who, while still young, have already put their names to films that have made their mark in Finland and abroad.