I made this Swedish movie called 'Snabba Cash,' or 'Easy Money,' and it was shown at the Berlin Film Festival. A lot of American studios, agents, and people like that saw it there and liked it.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
This worldwide spread of recognition is insane. I was brought up in a small country. If you made a Swedish film that just got into a film festival somewhere, that was like the biggest thing you could wish for.
I made 'Siam Sunset.' In Australia, it was pretty much universally hated, but I did notice that almost any American who saw it loved that film, so in 2001 I made a film in America called 'Swimfan,' and they released like a big studio movie, and it made money.
The media was always so focused on the money a movie makes. But I was in Times Square, and a bunch of Japanese tourists looked at me and started shouting, 'Toula!' I loved it. It's these tiny moments of connection that register with me the most and always have.
Eventually, in '84, we made a film for a little over a million dollars - with American actors that was shot in English - that was shown in Finland A little action film called Born American.
I thought 'The Bank Job' was a really quality movie.
I turn up in Los Angeles every now and then, so I can get some big money films in order to finance my smaller money films.
I was a banker in Morocco when I first saw 'American Graffiti.' It was before I was an actor, a melancholy time in my life, and this mood was reflected in the film.
It proved to be pretty impossible to get funds for a feature film in Finland. It's still small, but the film industry was miniscule at that point in the early '80s.
A government institution called the Finnish Film Foundation funds filmmaking there, and I wrote several screenplays but never got any money. They were sent back to me, and they said that they were too commercial for them.
The only film I ever made for money was something called 'Music From Another Room', which I really didn't like.