Meet TTS Alumna Hanna Nordenswan, Class of 2017-18
This month we are spotlighting Hanna Nordenswan, a Finnish filmmaker who pursued an MFA in Documentary Film at the School of Visual Arts in 2017-18. We checked in with her to hear about what she’s up to these days and how her time as a Thanks To Scandinavia scholar impacted her.
What are you up to these days?
I work full time as a documentary film director and do some freelance journalism work on the side.
I’m working on my first feature documentary, Sense and Sensitivity. Hopefully it will be ready by the end of the year! The film follows a very special mother and daughter-duo, who both work and live at a cemetery in Helsinki. It shows their work as cremator and verger from a quite comedic perspective, but in the end the film dives into more serious territory, depicting death, co-dependency and letting go.
Me and my editor spent March-April editing the film at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville! It was great to be back in New York and we enjoyed our time at the Burns immensely. The editing residency was part of a pitching award from the film festival Doc Leipzig — I’ve had a good run pitching the project these past few years and it has gained international interest.
I’m very lucky to have been able to work in this field as much as I have, with all the challenges facing the film industry and documentaries in particular. At the moment I am firmly based in Helsinki, but my work has allowed me to travel a lot and I hope to keep doing that!
How did your experience as a Thanks To Scandinavia scholar shape your career and perspective?
Without Thanks To Scandinavia I wouldn’t have been able to complete my masters at the School of Visual Arts. The Social Documentary department at SVA completely changed my career, allowing me to start working on a more creative level compared to my previous work as a journalist. These two lines of work are now parallel careers for me and I am very grateful to be able to do both.
During my time at SVA, I got to build my creative style from the ground up and experiment while I was learning. And because of TTS I was able to live, work and study in New York for three years and build a great network of filmmakers.
TTS also connected me to the family of the late Kim Wall, a connection which meant a lot to me at the time and that I continue to cherish.