SHORT BIO

Antti Haase (b. 1972) grew up in the neighborhood of Santa Claus in Rovaniemi (Finland), right on the Arctic Circle. In the late 1990s, he studied and worked in the Australian film industry and received the Film Australia Documentary Award for his AFTRS M.A. (Film & TV) graduation documentary Clown Doctors (2000). After migrating back to Finland, Antti has directed several award-winning documentary films set in his native Lapland. Monsterman (2014), a film about the Finnish heavy metal band Lordi, won the Main Prize for documentary films at Austin Film Festival and the Finnish State Quality Award. The film was in the top 10 of Finnish films with the most international festival screenings in 2016. The Illuminators (2017) is a family story about Antti’s grandfather Gunnar Haase, who became “the father of light” to Lapland after introducing electricity to the region. The film won the Best Documentary Prize at Nordic Film Days in Lübeck. Antti’s latest film, The Master Brewer (2021), tells a magical comeback story about Leo Andelin, who in 1963 developed the most famous food of Finland – Lapland Gold beer. So far the film has been screened at over 60 film festivals in 26 countries. Antti has also explored the possibilities of documentary in interactive art form with Portrait of Elli (2009), which won the Main Prize at Luleå International Art Biennial. In October 2020 Antti was presented with the Lapland Artist Award. Antti lives with his family in an old frontier man’s house on the riverbank of Tornio river.