Conflict of interest
Conflict co-creators Aku Louhimies and Andrei Alén discuss collaborating on this highly anticipated Finnish political military thriller, stepping away from real-world events and why realism has been at the forefront of the project from the script to the set.
At a certain point in the production of a television series, the scripts must be locked and filming completed if viewers are ever going to see it on screen. But when you’re making a contemporary political military drama, real-world events can have a habit of constantly changing your plans.
That was certainly the case with Conflict (aka Konflikti), a six-part drama from Finland that explores the possibility of the country finding itself at the centre of a proxy war in Europe – when an enemy attacks a neutral country to provoke a wider battle – and the human drama of those forced into combat.
“This is a project we had developed quite a long time ago, but then Covid happened and it postponed everything. Then the Ukraine war happened, which also affected the script a little bit, and then Finland became a member of NATO and that affected the plot a little bit,” director Aku Louhimies tells DQ. “Unfortunately reality is catching up with us. We always thought this would be more [from our] imagination, and now it’s getting closer and closer to us. It’s even more realistic than we wanted it to be.”
The six-part series opens as a military unit of conscripts completes its training on Midsummer’s Eve, just as an unidentified enemy invades the picturesque Finnish peninsula. With foreign nationals among 10,000 people now held hostage in the occupied area, the US president and other allies urge Finland’s newly elected president to take decisive action.
Faced with the very real threat of a proxy war, President Saaristo (played by Sara Soulié) must follow her instincts and moral compass to not only secure the safety of her own people, but also those of Europe.
Co-created by Louhimies and Andrei Alén, the multilingual drama boasts an international cast led by Peter Franzén (Vikings), Dylan Smith (The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power), Nadia Forde (Once Upon a Time in London), Soulié (The Man Who Died) and Larry Lamb (Gavin & Stacey).
Louhimies and actor Alén had previously worked together on Tuntematon sotilas (The Unknown Soldier), a 2017 feature set during the Second World War that focuses on a Finnish machine gun company during the Continuous War with the Soviet Union. But before production had even wrapped, the pair began imagining what a similar story set in the present day would be like.
“Obviously the characters would be very different. Society’s very different, but also how you come into conflict is very different and the methods used are different. Everything is drastically different,” Alén says. “It was seeded there and then, and we were very close to production [on Conflict] in 2020, when this still felt like a very ‘what if’ scenario. It felt way more fictional, way more story-like, but then reality started to creep up on us.
“It’s been very interesting making something like this and then mirroring it with what’s been happening to all of us in Europe and everywhere in the world. But that was never our intention in any way. This has never been about commentary or anything like that. This has just been about wanting to examine modern-day people in extreme environments and how the extreme environments can very quickly creep up on us. Do we have the capabilities and the endurance to deal with circumstances like that?”
With events in Europe such as Russia’s war on Ukraine ongoing, Louhimies and Alén sought to lean away from real-life politics and ended up changing or amending several plot points, including one storyline about destroyed gas lines under the Baltic Sea – something that actually happened in 2022.
But it was always their intention to create an international series that features Finns, Americans, Brits, Russians and other nationalities with an unknown group of antagonists seemingly intent on starting a war in Finland to kickstart a wider conflict.
“It’s such a big show that the Scandinavian market itself is not big enough for it,” says Louhimies. “But also we thought it would be content that would interest other parts of the world. Even though it’s local, it should be very international at the same time.”
“Our main aim was always to create a very realistic depiction of what this would look like,” Alén says. “And in reality, it would be a very international thing. It would not just be us [Finland] coming up with the means to deal with this dispute, especially nowadays with us being a part of NATO. It would be an international situation from the get-go and there would be a whole set of different people from different backgrounds participating in it.”
To write the scripts, Louhimies and Alén worked with Helena Immonen and Jari Olavi Rantala (Deadwind) to develop the show before penning a lot of the episodes themselves, always with an eye on realism as they built up characters who “are definitely having the worst time of their lives,” Alén says. “It’s been very interesting to find the nuances as to where are we going to focus and what we are going to tell the audience, and where are we going to lead the audience to with the characters, because the event in itself is so mind-blowing to every single person within the story.”
Writing a TV show is a first for Alén, while Conflict offered both him and Louhimies the chance to experience the world of television financing for the first time as producers when they sought partners to help them build the €12m (US$13.2m) budget.
Finnish broadcaster MTV3 came on board at an early stage, with the series produced by Backmann & Hoderhoff and XYZ Films. Keshet International also joined as the international distributor and has already secured sales to Canal+ in France and Poland, AMC Networks International in Spain and Portugal, Telia Lithuania in Lithuania, Telia Estonia in Estonia, Tet and Latvijas Mobilais Telefons in Latvia, and HOT in Israel ahead of its world premiere later this year.
“It’s been quite unconventional TV-making in the sense that me and Andrei have had all the decisions to ourselves,” Louhimies says. “We have been able to choose the cast, choose the writing and do changes on the go, even on the day, if we want to change something, so in that sense it’s been a bit different.”
Alén adds: “In many ways, it’s closer to an independent film than a network television show. It does not follow traditional television production rules. It more leans into like independent film production, although obviously storytelling and the structure of the story is very much quite a traditional television format now.”
Bringing the series together involved lots of discussions with various potential partners. “It’s very time-consuming and it’s very stressful because, at the end of the day, you have very little power,” Alén says. “If you manage to woo people then you’re in a good place. If you don’t then you’re not in such a good place. But it’s also so much to do with luck. We have to remember that we got very lucky in the beginning that we even got the opportunity to make something like this.”
When it comes to realism in Conflict, it isn’t just the characters that needed to be rooted in authenticity, but the action on screen too. That’s why Louhimies avoided using CGI as much as possible, save for a few explosions, and focused on practical effects and stunt sequences – many of which called for impressive use of tanks, helicopters and planes. The cast were also put through a boot camp to ensure they could hold guns and other weapons in the right way.
“If there is violence, it should look real,” the director says. “I don’t need close-ups of blood, but I wanted the action to be realistic when it happens. I also wanted people to talk and interact with each other the way they would in a real situation.
“One important thing is the northern light. This was shot, and the story takes place, in Midsummer here in Finland – the white night – so it’s mainly shot in natural light. It doesn’t get dark at all. All the night scenes, you’re still able to see everyone’s faces. You have to experience this kind of midnight sun to fully experience how it is. That’s one key element in the series.”
“We’ve had discussions with people that have seen the episodes and questioned, ‘Is that CGI?’ No, it’s not CGI,” Alén says. “It’s 100% in-camera, apart from some explosions. All the helicopters, all the planes you see, they’re all in-camera, and that gives another unique element to the show.”
Now putting the finishing touches to the series, Louhimies and Alén are planning “many, many adventures” together, whether that’s a second season of Conflict – possibly set in Lapland – or a different project entirely.
“We’ve had a really good experience and we want to make the experience even better and bigger,” Alén says. “We’re very excited for people to see this. It’s a fascinating, unique show and there are a lot of things that people haven’t seen before. That’s going to excite audiences. I can’t wait for people to see it.”
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tagged in: Aku Louhimies, Andrei Alén, Backmann & Hoderhoff, Conflict, Keshet International, Konflikti, MTV3, XYZ Films