Culture
Finnish Film About a Squirrel Declared More Humane Than All of Outer Space
By Bruno Von Falken, . BSN Network. Satire.
Finland has submitted 'The Squirrel,' a futuristic drama directed by Markus Lehmusruusu, as its official entry for Oscar consideration, and it has arrived carrying what may be the most extraordinary blurb in the history of Nordic cinema.
Aki Kaurismäki, the revered Finnish auteur best known for filming humans at their most defeated and loving them anyway, called the film a masterpiece. He then compared it to '2001: A Space Odyssey.' He then said it was better than '2001: A Space Odyssey.' His stated reason was that 'The Squirrel' is full of humanism, a word Kaurismäki deployed as though he had just invented it and was filing a patent.
'I really loved that,' Lehmusruusu told Variety, with the barely contained joy of a man who has just been told his sourdough is better than the bread Jesus used at the Last Supper and is trying to seem humble about it.
For those keeping score at home: '2001: A Space Odyssey' took Stanley Kubrick four years, a budget equivalent to a small moon mission, and seventeen minutes of psychedelic tunnel footage to complete. 'The Squirrel' has beaten it on humanism. The squirrel won. The squirrel beat the monolith.
Kaurismäki, for his part, is not a man who traffics in loose comparisons. His own films, masterworks like 'The Match Factory Girl' and 'Le Havre,' are studies in people who have been ground down by history, capitalism, and weather, and who persist anyway, usually near a bar. When he says something has humanism, he means it the way a cardiologist means it when he says you have a heart. It is a clinical finding.
This makes his endorsement of a film called 'The Squirrel' either the most important thing he has ever said about cinema or a very long setup for a joke that will only land at the Academy Awards.
Reached for further comment, a spokesperson for Finnish cinema noted that Kaurismäki does not give further comments, has never given further comments, and once responded to a journalist's follow-up question by refilling his own coffee and leaving the room. The coffee, by all accounts, was excellent and full of humanism.
Lehmusruusu's film follows a woman navigating a future society that has apparently solved most of its large problems but retained all of its small, human, humiliating ones, which is either a brilliant satirical premise or an accurate description of Finland in the present day. The squirrel of the title has not been fully explained by the production, which is either artistically deliberate or a very good reason to see the film.
What is clear is that Finland is arriving at Oscar season with a film its greatest living director has placed above the entire filmography of Stanley Kubrick on the grounds of emotional generosity, which is the kind of critical position that either makes history or gets you laughed out of the Academy's documentary branch.
Either way, the squirrel is in the race now.
Kubrick could not be reached for comment, which is frankly on brand.
The story we are making fun of: https://variety.com/2026/film/global/markus-lehmusruusu-oscar-submission-squirrel-kaurismaki-1236863403/