Photo: Leyla Everaers / R&A 2020 — Hello, I’m Hannaleena Hauru (she/her), a filmmaker living in Helsinki, Finland. I direct, write, edit and act.
I have recently directed Eva-Maria Koskinen’s series “The Boy Next Door” (4 x 50 min) for Yle - premiere 4 August 2025.
At the moment I’m writing my fourth feature film. My previous short and feature films have premiered at the Cannes Critics’ Week, Berlinale, Venice Biennale Cinema and have been awarded at the Tampere and Oberhausen Film Festivals, among others.
In 2023 I finished my MA studies in comparative dramaturgy and performance research at Uniarts Helsinki and Goethe Uni Frankfurt. Earlier I have graduated from ELO Helsinki Film School at Aalto University. I also work as a teacher and as a dramaturg and I’m planning my third-cycle studies.

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FLOCKS (2024)

The lives of five young adults get entangled for 24 hours in this absurd drama set in wintery Helsinki. The film focuses on experiences as a racialized or indigenous person, and as a non-binary trans person in Finland in 2024. The film deals also with the representation of people with learning disabilities. The film is fiction, but has been built collectively together with the actors and the whole crew based on real-life experiences.

After losing an interesting film job to her nemesis Kristian, Hanna teams up with her sister and counterculture friends to create a parody romance on Instagram between herself and young actor Ekku. They are passionate to make visible how the society is hungry for romantic narratives. Hanna starts living a crowd-pleasing love story for the public, only to find herself tangled up in the unresolved past with her “you were never my boyfriend” friend Lasse, who also happens to be the real-life co-writer and cinematographer of Fucking with Nobody. As the fake-romance starts affecting everyone involved, a hurricane of desires, fantasies, hurt and intimacy is set off. Everyone involved has to decide what they are ready to put in front of the camera. Fiction and auto-fiction crash and melt into each other, as writer-director Hannaleena Hauru plays the lead role of an ever-single film director Hanna. FUCKING WITH NOBODY Director: Hannaleena Hauru Running Time: 102' Country: Finland Main Cast: Hannaleena Hauru, Lasse Poser, Samuel Kujala, Pietu Wikström, Sara Melleri, Hanna-Kaisa Tiainen, Jussi Lankoski, Anna Kuusamo, Tanja Heinänen

FUCKING WITH NOBODY (2020)

“Hanna teams up with her sister to create a parody Instagram romance with a young actor and raise awareness on how hungry society is for romantic narratives. Once her love story begins, however, Hanna finds herself tangled up in the unresolved past with her “you were never my boyfriend” friend Lasse. - MUBI

A scene from the feature film "Thick Lashes of Lauri Mäntyvaara" (2017), dir. Hannaleena Hauru Satu - Alvi Haapamäki Henri - Santeri Helinheimo Mäntylä Produced by Aamu Film Company, Finland

THICK LASHES OF LAURI MÄNTYVAARA (2017)

“Kickass girls on dirtbikes surfing across finnish lakes, paired with the vulnarability of the teenage crush that takes a hold of you and make you lose touch with reality. The director has an energetic aesthetic, and brings us characters we could stay in the company of for hours. We can’t wait to see the next thing this director comes up with. Honorable mention goes to the engaging and imaginative Thick Lashes of Lauri Mäntyvaara.” - Oslo PIX 2018