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Mikael Wahlforss, born 1944, M.A. Helsinki University and graduated from the Finnish Film School (University of Applied Arts)

Mikael Wahlforss has produced and directed numerous documentaries for the Finnish company Epidem, many of them with Latin American subjects, e.g. the 3 hour series “In the Shadow of Power”, also known as “The Enemy Within”.

Epidem was founded as a group in 1968 and established as a limited company in 1974. Since then Epidem has produced over 100 television films, most of them distributed internationally, featuring such prominent directors as Chris Marker, Kiti Luostarinen, Amos Gitai, Pirjo Honkasalo and John Webster.

In 1992 Mikael Wahlforss founded Epidem ZOT, a company which develops and packages original animation concepts. Some of the concepts have been developed with the support of organisations such as UNICEF and WWF. Each concept constitutes a basis for entertaining, innovative and often educational ancillary products & services: books, electronic games and digital theme parks.

The films developed and produced by Epidem have received many awards at international festivals, among them Prix Futura and Silver Pulcinella.

Mikael Wahlforss:

“As a documentary film-maker I have had the privilege to be present during many dramatic moments in the recent history of Latin America. I spent five months in Chile during the last year of Allende, filmed in Videla’s Argentina and Banzer’s Bolivia. I met with Somoza and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua during the Sandinista insurrection, filmed in a small village in Northern Nicaragua during the conflict with the contras and walked with the FMLN for some months in El Salvador. Then I got fascinated by Guatemala, which was in the middle of a civil war in the beginning of the eighties.

We wanted to film ten documentaries which would look at Guatemala from different angles, during a long period of time, and then compile these film into a long and strong epic film. Our model was the Argentinean classic documentary The Hour of the Furnaces (La Hora de los Hornos) by Fernando Solanas. Unfortunately, however, I had to stop the project for family reasons after having made three one-hour films, of which two will be shown during the festival”.