Eight Deadly Shots

Inspired by the true story of the 1969 killing of four policemen by Finnish farmer Tauno Pasanen, Niskanen’s overwhelming film recounts, over 316 increasingly engrossing, intensely intimate minutes, how the crushing pressures of poverty and alcoholism led Pasanen to breaking point. The everyday details of his life – at home with his family, at back-breaking work in snow-covered forests, brewing illegal moonshine with friends – are realised with an unparalleled authenticity, and the whole film is centred around an astonishingly committed lead performance by Niskanen himself. The late Finnish festival director and filmmaker Peter von Bagh’s dying wish was that the film be restored; the result confirms Niskanen’s magnum opus as a masterpiece, and one of the film restoration events of the year. Screened as part of Treasures.

LFF digital screenings are not available on the Samsung TV app or via casting from the iOS app.