‘Why shouldn’t someone with a good upbringing choose sex work?’ Mikko Mäkelä on his new drama film

The face of queer cinema has changed since A Moment In The Reeds, the feature directorial debut from Finnish-British filmmaker Mikko Mäkelä.

The film traces the love affair between Finnish student Leevi and Syrian asylum seeker Tareq, as both spend a summer renovating Leevi’s father’s home. It arrived in 2017, the same year that Josh O’Connor’s bucolic drama God’s Own Country edged the British mainstream; both films were compared to Brokeback Mountain, from 12 years earlier, which speaks volumes about the scarcity of major queer films even just eight years ago.

“I think queer cinema has, kind of, been thriving, generally,” says 36-year-old Mäkelä, slowly and unconvincingly. We’re chatting over Zoom about his recently-released film Sebastian, he in London where he moved to from Finland as a

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