THE SQUIRREL
Feature Film, 2026 ● 92 min
Finland's official submission — Academy Award for Best International Feature Film
Official Selection — Fantastic Fest 2026
A man who designs fake animals finds a real one — and discovers he is one too.
________________
There are no animals left.
Pasi designs synthetic pets for a world that no longer has real ones — until a living squirrel turns up in his apartment and refuses to leave. He disinfects it, builds it a terrarium, installs a wheel and some tasteful lighting, and on his birthday makes it a small cake.
An undocumented life form in a residential unit is a serious hygiene violation, and inspector Emilia is assigned to the case. She is not what Pasi expected, and neither is what happens between them.
But the squirrel stops moving. Comfort is not what it needs, and the only way to save it is to give it up. Pasi is not willing — and what he does instead is not something he lets himself call selfish. It doesn't work, and he is left alone in an immaculate apartment. He leaves the city to look for a forest he isn't sure exists, and Emilia has a decision of her own to make.
________________
Director's statement
I love nature. I also love a hot shower after two nights outdoors, and an endless supply of AI-generated images more absorbing than the trees around me. That contradiction is the seed of The Squirrel: what happens to a species that adores the wild but has quietly engineered it out of its own life?
The world of The Squirrel wasn't broken by disaster — it was chosen. Every surface is clean, every risk removed, every animal replaced by something more tame and easier to love. It's not a dystopia: it’s what happens when people are given complete freedom and use it to make themselves comfortable. That felt more honest, and more frightening, than any control-state fantasy.
Working with real squirrels instead of building them digitally was never really a question, even when I was warned they'd bite and never once take direction. Both warnings turned out to be accurate. Still, in a world this synthetic, the one thing that couldn't be manufactured was the unpredictable animal itself.
That's the film I set out to make: one that looks hard at what we've become. I didn't want to resolve the contradiction. I still haven't.
— Markus Lehmusruusu
________________
Main Cast
Miro Lopperi (Pasi), Mimosa Willamo (Emilia), Hannu-Pekka Björkman (Jimi), Pirjo Heikkilä (Ava), Ella Mettänen (Sofia), Eero Ritala (Tony), Pirjo Lonka (Vera), Roderick Kabanga (Laine)
Director & Screenwriter
Markus Lehmusruusu
Director of Photography
Max Smeds, F.S.C.
Production Designer
Michael Randel
Editor
Florian Miosge
Composer
Freya Arde
Costume Designer
Teresa Grosser
Hair & Make-up Designer
Pur Thijs
Sound designer
Ranko Paukovic
Produced by
Mark Lwoff & Misha Jaari / Bufo (FI)
Co-produced by
Thanassis Karathanos & Martin Hampel / Pallas Film (GER), Denis Vaslin & Fleur Knopperts / Volya Films (NL), Ronny Fritsch & Lizette Jonjic / Zentropa Sweden (SWE)
Financed by
Finnish Film Foundation, Yle, Fireframe Studios, Gotlands Filmfond, German Federal Film Fund, Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung, Netherlands Film Fund, Svenska Kulturfonden, Konstsamfundet, Netherlands Film Production Incentive, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg
Developed through TorinoFilmLab's ScriptLab
Presented at Göteborg Film Festival, New Nordic Films Haugesund and Finnish Film Affair
________________
Sales — REinvent International Sales
