Elina Oikari ⎜Finnish cultural foundation (Finland)

Finnish artist and filmmaker Elina Oikari works in the realm between art house cinema, media art and documentary film methodology centered around cinéma vérité and essay film. Her work often deals with current social themes, timeless places, and absurd encounters. Elina 

aims to challenge the conventional underlying narrative framework and sound design in video and filmmaking. She has worked over 15 years with fiction, documentary and alternative film, and holds a Master of Arts from the ELO Film School Finland in Aalto University (2014). 
Oikari’s work has been widely shown at several 

festivals in Finland and abroad, including Helsinki International Film Festival 2025 & 2022, New Horizons IFF, Wrocław 2022, Encounters FF, Bristol 2022, Nordische Filmtage Lübeck 2021 & 2019, Go Short — ISFF Nijmegen 2022 and Gijón International Film Festival 2019.

During her residency, Elina will carry out a documentary film project that explores what it was like to be 20 years old in the early 2000s, and how it resonates with today’s young people living in Narva close to the border. Another key element in the project is her HD-video cassette material shot in the 2000s. Oikari aims to explore the connections between these two uncertain decades with several crisis; 2000s and 2020s, as well as examine the social effects of the transition from the time of keypad phones to the current omnipresence of smartphones. Narva’s location as border area and NART hosting student groups, Elina thinks this is an ideal residency to commit her project.

«The best side of NART is the ideal location for my socially, and socio-politically-engaged project talking about our recent history, generational experiences, and the current dreams & fears of Narva’s residents in their twenties.»