Days of Wonders Review (PÖFF)
“Does art exist if no one has seen it?” The line appears somewhere in the film’s 88-minute runtime, and it somehow charts the path to an answer through a single case: Markku Pennanen.
Markku is the uncle of the director, a man whose life, after the childhood recollections of his niece, gradually faded into obscurity. The now grown-up Karin Pennanen, following her film studies and a string of uncertain artistic explorations of all kinds, embarks on a mission to illuminate the 34-year story of her uncle. She gains access to his belongings and finds herself facing an avalanche of material: paintings, drawings, sketches, videotapes, diaristic recordings, photographs, and collages. A multimedia archive in formidable volume. More than anything, she uncovers the insatiable creative temperament of Markku.
Days of Wonders takes on the shape of a multimedia piece itself: part home video, part interview with family members, and part playful animation. Together, these elements form a documentary that sets out, in its most candid sense, to pay homage to a family member who withdrew from others simply to exist as himself. Karin shoulders the unsettled and puzzling guilt of her family, driven by a precise and stubborn urge to reconstruct his life. She follows every possible thread that crosses her path, from a high school friend to a platonic lover to even a medium claiming to communicate with the dead. Tape recordings of Markku’s phone calls and his music keep everyone company, steering the film’s rhythm and transitions as she advances in her search.
Director Karin Pennanen seems to belong to a recent wave of female documentarists, who are mature enough to handle the overwhelming abundance of archival material with composure and discernment. She navigates the boundless, unordered, and anarchical territory of her uncle’s archive with an investigative instinct that never loses its grounded footing. Her approach carries emotion without sentimentality; she enters the frame only when necessary, with a pristine sensitivity that allows the viewer to locate their own points of connection.
In truth, Days of Wonders is a generous examination of the artistic process itself. Within the art world, such processes are often exposed for the sake of trend association or, worse, reduced to digestible snippets that render artists as star (consumable) figures for social media. Karin’s film resists that reduction. Through a gentle dramaturgy of discoveries, she allows Markku’s artistic spirit to rise on its own terms, without forcing coherence, justification, or resolution. She also avoids sanctifying his art, granting it the natural space it needs for its visual intelligence to emerge.
What results is a transgenerational testament to art’s persistence, a proof that artistic creation, even when unseen, continues to breathe and grow.
Days of Wonders was screened at PÖFF (Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival) as part of the Main Competition section and is now heading to the Montreal International Documentary Festival.
Days of Wonder (Päivien Lumo), 88’, Documentary / Dir. & Writer: Karin Pennanen / Cinematography: Pietari Peltola, Ville Tanttu / Editing: Markus Leppälä / Music: Markku Pennanen / Producer: Sonja Lindén / Finland
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