They prize dignity, equality and respect, and they do not want to live in mental institutions "because everyone has the right to make a decision about where and how they want to live". They sing about everything, from pedicurists, to decision-makers who cheat, and to how you feel when you don't get coffee because you have a mental disability. Spelling seems difficult at times: how would you spell 'human being' in Finnish?
Energetically shot fly-on-the-wall documentary The Punk Syndrome chronicles the life of idiosyncratically named Finnish band Pertti Kurikka's Name Day. Filmmaker duo Jukka Kärkkäinen and J-P Passi shoot candidly and affectionately the tours, concerts, fears, frictions, love lives and personality clashes among the four charming misfits - Kari, Pertti, Sami and Toni - who are at the heart of the film. Although we occasionally bump into gloomier stories which remind us of the effort required from both disabled people and the rest of the society to change attitudes towards disability, this remains largely an upbeat celebration of four men who refuse to let mental disability stop them from making the most out of their lives.
This is not about crying, this is about punk.
AUDIO: Finnish
SUBTITLE: English, Romanian
awards and festivals
Best Feature Length Documentary, Breaking Down Barriers – Disability Film Festival, Russia, 2012 Special Prize in Documentary, 2morrow Film Festival, Russia, 2012 Mail Prize "Film on Art", New Horizons Festival, Poland, 2012 Winner of the Spezial Jury Prize for the Most Innovative Feature Film, Visions du Reel Nyon, Switzerland, 2012 Winner of the Audience Award, Tampere Film Festival, Finland, 2012 RIDM Rencontres Internationales du documentaire de Montreal, Canada, 2012 Arhus Film Festival, Denmark, 2012 International Documentary Film Festival, Taiwan, 2012 Ad-Hoc Human Rights Film Festival, Vilnius, Lithuania, 2012 Finnish Film Affair, Helsinki, Finland, 2012 DMZ Korean International Documentary Festival, Paju, South Korea, 2012 The Other Film Festival, Melbourne, Australia, 2012 Rauma Blue Sea Film Festival, Finland, 2012 Locarno Film Festival, Switzerland, 2012 SilverDocs Film Festival, USA, 2012 Sheffield International Documentary Film Festival, UK, 2012