Posted March 31, 2026
Artists-in-Residence: Hanna Nordenswan & Hanna Kuirinlahti
As part of our ongoing interviews with Artists-in-Residence at the Burns, we caught up with filmmakers Hanna Nordenswan & Hanna Kuirinlahti to discuss their current work-in-progress. Hanna and Hanna are currently working on Hanna Nordenswan’s first feature documentary, Sense and Sensitivity, which was awarded the JBFC Residency at the 2025 DOK Leipzig festival.
- How did this residency come about, and how did you learn about the Burns?
Hanna N.: I was pitching at the DOK Leipzig festival in October 2025 and met with JBFC programmer Eric Hynes there. He told me and our producer Hannu-Pekka Vitikainen about the residency, which sounded amazing. To our huge surprise Eric announced us as the winners of the Jacob Burns Residency award at the festival the next day! And now here we are in this lovely house, in this lovely town.
- Can you tell us a bit about the film you are working on during your residency?
We are working on my first feature length doc, Sense and Sensitivity (Järki ja Tunne in Finnish). It was called Sense and Sensibility until very recently, but we had some more feedback from English speaking people about the title and its Jane Austen connection… It’s a film set in a cemetery in Helsinki and it follows a mother and daughter who both work and live at the cemetery. It’s a documentary about letting go, mother-daughter relationships and….death. But it’s also a comedy, to a certain extent! We are working on our rough cut here and have made a lot of progress already.
- How has the residency helped shape your work on your film?
It has been amazing to get some distance from where the film happens! Fresh surroundings and being in this edit bubble in the residency also feels good so you look at your project with new eyes. Here we can focus only on this and at the same time find inspiration from being in a new place—and of course by watching lots and lots of films at the Burns. You can also feel the previous filmmakers who have spent time here in the walls of the house, and it feels inspiring.
- What do you want viewers to learn from your film?
I want them to gain a new perspective on their relationship with their parents., and to maybe feel a little less scared of the processes surrounding death. I want them to feel like it’s ok to laugh about sad things too, it might even help.
- What are some of the most interesting things you’ve learned while working on your film?
That people are often nervous about how they’re allowed to express their feelings when a loved one has died. It was also interesting to learn how the cremation process works. And that some people have an amazingly friction-free relationship with their mother…
- If you had not had this opportunity, how would you go about completing your film project(s)?
We’d be sitting in a smaller and darker editing suite at our producer’s production company’s office. And we probably wouldn’t have realized some of the things about our film’s structure that we’ve realized here!
- Which filmmakers or artists do you most admire/draw inspiration from?
I’m a huge fan of Gianfranco Rosi’s – whose latest film we just got to see here at the Burns. I love Roy Andersson too. And Sámi filmmaker Suvi West, whose previous film Hanna Kuirinlahti edited which was one of the reasons I wanted to work with Hanna 🙂 And I have to mention Sreemoye Singh, whose film And Towards Happy Alleys I have thought about a lot while here.
- Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Thank you for having us, this residency has been such a gift!
Hanna Nordenswan is a Finnish journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in Helsinki. Her work includes documentary films, broadcast news, podcasts, and both print and radio freelance work. Hanna works fluently in English, Swedish, and Finnish and sometimes confuses and amuses her co-workers with jokes in one or all of these languages. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Helsinki and a master’s in documentary film from the School of Visual Arts in New York. Her strengths as a filmmaker lie in building meaningful connections with the protagonists and in featuring a visually fascinating style. She aims to find the extraordinary in the ordinary and likes to depict everyday people, lifting them up through a poetic cinematic language. Her short documentaries have been screened at festivals from New York to Dhaka and her thesis film from the School of Visual Arts was shortlisted for a Student BAFTA Award
Hanna Kuirinlahti is a Finnish film editor working in Helsinki. She has edited numerous feature films, short films, and tv series in a variety of different genres. The films she has edited have circled around many film festivals and received several awards and nominations: Máhccan (2024) was screened at Toronto International Film Festival and won the Best Documentary Film prize and the Nordisk Film Award at Jussi-gala (Finnish Oscars) in 2024. In 2025 at the Jussi-gala, Hanna was nominated for Best Film Editing for her work on the film Levoton Tuhkimo (2024) and she had also been nominated for this prize with the short documentary Fabulous Cow Ladies (2024). This year, Huoneet (2025) is nominated as the best short film at Jussi-gala. Hanna loves film editing and gets great joy out of it. She will be forever fascinated by finding out the most interesting way to tell a story with the material at hand, and she prioritizes good communication and collaboration with the director of the films she works on. Hanna has a Master’s degree from Aalto University, Department of Film, Television and Scenography.
