“Fruitcakes: Dawn of Drag,” director Vesa Kuosmanen’s documentary about reviving Finland’s first drag show, has its world premiere Saturday, Nov. 7, in the Doc@PÖFF International Competition at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in Estonia. “For me, it’s about reclaiming history, reclaiming something,” Kuosmanen told The Hollywood Reporter, which debuted the film’s trailer Thursday.
That show was “Happy Gays,” and Jolanda, now a 70-year-old retired archivist, performed in it in the late 1970s with his friend Mummo. According to the festival’s synopsis, “the performance was even broadcast on television, and Mummo became one of the first openly gay men in Finland.”
Mummo was killed in his Helsinki home in April 1988, as fear of AIDS took hold, and the synopsis says “the police were unwilling to solve the case and the entire crime was hushed up.”
How Hockey Fans and a Reluctant Archivist Shaped ‘Fruitcakes’
The spark came a few years ago, when Finland won the ice hockey world championship and people flooded the streets. “We rarely have such collective joy,” Kuosmanen told THR.
The director is no hockey fan but liked seeing the celebrations. “But then I heard that my friends were beaten up by ice hockey fans just because they look different,” Kuosmanen said.
“My conclusion was it’s fear,” the filmmaker said. “It’s a fear of difference.”
Exploring how fear creates anger led Kuosmanen to Mummo’s story. “So, I wanted to find out more about the story of Mummo’s murder,” the director said. Finding people who remembered that era, and would talk about it, was hard. “It almost felt like it was a forgotten history of Finland,” Kuosmanen added.
Jolanda had kept the archive. Kuosmanen called him “the most unlikely documentary protagonist ever” because he didn’t want to be in the film. “He also refuses to use the pronouns she/her,” the director said. Jolanda, the synopsis says, “has spent most of his life in the closet.”
The film mixes 1980s archive footage, re-created scenes and new rehearsals where the generations don’t always agree. “This contrast gives rise to both humour and a sense of recognition,” the festival says.
Where ‘Fruitcakes: Dawn of Drag’ Screens at Tallinn’s PÖFF
PÖFF, which runs Nov. 6 to 22 in Tallinn and Tartu, has the premiere at 7 p.m. local time Saturday in Hall 7 of Apollo Kino Plaza. Kuosmanen, producer Sandra Enkvist, cast members Meeti Assefa and Wilma Schlizewski and three of the crew are listed for a 20-minute Q&A afterward. “This warm and heartfelt film is a story of one community’s cultural memory,” the program note reads.
It screens again Nov. 9 at 8:30 p.m. at Kino Artis and Nov. 12 at 9:45 p.m. at Apollo Kino Plaza, in Finnish with English subtitles, and the festival’s page says a Finnish theatrical release follows in February 2027. “It is a masterpiece of Finnish humor, connected to a very timely message as we see queer life being challenged and threatened every day,” said Anja Dziersk of Rise and Shine, which is handling world sales, THR reported.
The Finnish Film Foundation gave the production company, Polygraf, 182,000 euros in development and production support in 2024, and Denmark’s Paloma Productions co-produced. “In the 80s, the fear of AIDS was universal, and its legacy still echoes in the lives of the survivors among us,” Enkvist told Business Doc Europe that year.
Vesa Kuosmanen on Fear, Joy and the Title’s Wink
The film doesn’t dwell on Mummo’s killing. “That was really important for me because I think that when you portray queer violence, in a way it creates more violence,” Kuosmanen told THR. “There have been so many films where queer people get killed.”
“So I really wanted to be careful that it would not be one of those,” the director said.
Kuosmanen wanted some cheek in the name, too. “It’s difficult to find names that don’t sound too pretentious, so I think it’s good to have a little bit of a wink,” the filmmaker said. “I feel that the title is much more like the original Happy Gays.”
“‘Queer’ used to be a word you weren’t supposed to use, and now we are calling ourselves ‘queer,'” Kuosmanen said.
(Sasha Velour made a similar move with “Travesty,” an old word for drag, at The Wallis last month, Gayety reported.)
“For me, it’s all about celebration amidst the most horrible things happening,” Kuosmanen said, and that means parties, bars and kissing people, too. “We must be able to have agency,” the director said. “And we shouldn’t forget joy.”
