Hannaleena Hauru is a Finnish screenwriter and director. Her debut feature, “Thick Lashes of Lauri Mäntyvaara” (2016), was developed at Torino Film Lab and Cannes Cinéfondation Residency. Her earlier short films have premiered at Cannes Critics’ Week and Berlinale Generation, and awarded at Oberhausen, Uppsala, and Tampere Film Festivals.

“Fucking with Nobody” is screening at the 2021 SXSW Film Festival, which is taking place online March 16-20.

W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words.

HH: It’s a comedy about how difficult it is to be in a heterosexual relationship while being a feminist in 2021.

I play a character called Hanna who is an ever-single film director trying to take the next step in her career, like I am in real life. Hanna keeps failing in work and love. The film is set in the Nordic film and TV industry and the Helsinki activist underground. I wrote the film with my cinematographer Lasse Poser, who also acts in the film. Like us, all the other actors in the film were involved in creating the characters they play, and with the crew, we’re diving into our fantasies and nightmares of intimacy.

W&H: What drew you to this story?

HH: As a writer-director I felt [as if I was] always circling around my main themes: romantic love, sexuality, and intimacy, but never really hitting the core. For me, films filter real topics behind a layer of fiction. I’ve seen it in my colleagues’ auto-biographical work as well: when I’ve heard the original story and emotions behind their films, it’s always way more interesting and relatable than what they have ended up making in fiction.

I needed to cross a border, and for me, that was to stop hiding behind the camera. With a crew that consists of many of my close friends — and crushes — we stepped into this alternative universe. “Fucking with Nobody” is fiction but has this radical approach towards intimacy taken from real life, actual events, actual fantasies, and actual nightmares. Personally as an artist, ”Fucking with Nobody” was taking the step to “put it all in,” instead of making it only 95 percent.

W&H: What do you want people to think about after they watch the film?

HH: We wanted to make a film for anybody who feels their romantic and/or intimate relationships aren’t fitting the patterns approved by the Western concept of love. What the media is feeding us as “valid love relationships” is still horribly narrow.

“Fucking with Nobody ” is aimed to give hope. We don’t need patterns — dialogue is the path to building intimacy.

W&H: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?

HH: My co-writer/DOP, Lasse Poser, [and I] are acting in the film and the characters Hanna and Lasse are reflections of fantasies and nightmares that we have about ourselves, each other, or about the unconventional relationship we have had in the past. The biggest challenge was a personal one: to continuously find a balance between staying honest to oneself and creating a narrative that fits the form of a fiction feature film.

We did want to approach the film with humor; that’s something that comes naturally to me. For me, the more painful a topic in life is, the more likely it is that humor is needed.

I do want to give a “don’t try this at home” warning to anybody who might be inspired by this film. Truth may be rewarding but it’s not always pleasing.

W&H: How did you get your film funded? Share some insights into how you got the film made.

HH: “Fucking with Nobody” was funded from one source only: the Biennale College Cinema program in Venice. The program has been running since 2012, financing micro-budget films for directors who are making their first or second feature film. Our budget was 150,000 euros, and the rule of the program is the budget of the film can’t be more than that. Also, we had one year to make the film.

The Biennale Cinema College program was a dream come true because of the support we were getting, from screenwriting all the way to the final edits and finalizing. Over 40 different tutors along the way helped us with feedback, tips, and reflecting on our ideas. And the excellent and essential thing was, the tutors were on the same page, talking with each other about our project, so we were not in a situation that is more common: getting a lot of completely contradictory feedback during the film process from different funders, producers, and collaborators.

It was very straight-forward knowing from the start that we were making the film with this fixed budget of 150,000 euros. We knew this when starting to write the script, so we could kill our darlings at a very early stage, knowing the budget would not bend to it.

W&H: What inspired you to become a filmmaker?

HH: I never had this “I want to be a film director when I grow up” dream.

I was very much into theater, and after high school I was studying to become a theater producer. My school had a course on writing short films, where I had been getting good feedback about a couple of my scripts. Then I took part in the European NISI MASA Script Contest, and ended up winning production money to shoot the short film. I was looking for someone who would want to direct my script, but couldn’t really find anyone that would get my ideas. And that pretty much sums up how I started directing.

On paper my profession is a producer (B.A.) and a screenwriter (M.A.), but 95 percent of the jobs that are offered to me are directing.

W&H: What’s the best and worst advice you’ve received?

HH: Worst advice: As a woman, if you want to get laid, never reveal you’re a film director. This completely horrible and proven-to-be false advice was given to me in one public master class by an older female director in the early 2000s.

The best advice is from my parents and my sister: Stay true to yourself, select a profession that makes you happy, remember to rest, and be kind.

W&H: What advice do you have for other women directors? 

HH: To build dialogue between people that are not like you.

Something related to “Fucking with Nobody” is that I wanted to make a film about feminism and romantic love, and for me it was essential that I wrote it together with Lasse, who plays a white cis-hetero male in the film. In the present feminist circles in Finland, there’s a lot of hostility, aggression, and prejudice towards straight cis men, and many groups want to shut them out. My approach: [when it] comes to reframing the structures of heterosexual love and relationships, the only way is to do it with dialogue.

“Fucking with Nobody” was awarded at Seville Film Festival in Spain last fall with the “Women in Focus” award, and my Instagram inbox was filling up mostly with spectator comments complimenting how the film deals with toxic masculinity.

W&H: Name your favorite woman-directed film and why.

HH: Andrea Arnold’s “American Honey.” I’m a big fan of all her work, and it’s [because] I’m able to relate to the characters in her films.

I sense the world strongly with touch, smell, and taste. Andrea Arnold’s films are mastering haptic visuality, this way of bringing to cinema more than what is just seen through our eyes. Her work has encouraged me to trust that it is valid to experience the world in a different way, and that it’s not only beautiful pictures or vivid sentences that build our memory and history.

W&H: How are you adjusting to life during the COVID-19 pandemic? Are you keeping creative, and if so, how? 

HH: I live in the outskirts of Helsinki in Finland, and I can put my cross-country skis on at my front door and go skiing in the forest. Nature and the outdoors have been my savior against anxiety. And meditation. The blunt truth behind rebel feminist filmmaking: healthy lifestyle, eating porridge, staring at the forest scenery, and practicing mindfulness.

W&H: The film industry has a long history of underrepresenting people of color onscreen and behind the scenes and reinforcing — and creating — negative stereotypes. What actions do you think need to be taken to make Hollywood and/or the doc world more inclusive?

HH: I love pointing my finger to the big structures, and blaming the decision makers and rules of capitalism, but that’s the easy way out. It’s harder to admit that as a director-writer I have power, and I have been if not blind then at least lazy by, for example, staying quiet in a production meeting where yet again the same “oh he’s a good guy — and white, and male” is suggested to be recruited to the film crew. Or not being ready to fight enough when the producer prefers a more known white actor instead of the more talented actor of color.

I’ve slowly been building stamina and knowledge, learning the tools of how to become a diplomatic ally. Even small actions count, and for me, it’s starting from the talks around the production office coffee machine.