65 WILDING FILMS is an international film production company jointly managed by producer Alex Thiele and writer/director Miikka Leskinen. It was founded in 2009 and has bases in London, UK and Tampere, Finland.
65 WILDING FILMS produces films in a variety of genres by exciting new voices for the international marketplace.
Alex has 20 years experience of working across various sectors in the film and TV industry. In 2009, she set up 65 Wilding Films with writer/director Miikka Leskinen. After making a number of award-winning shorts she co-produced the feature Break My Fall by BAFTA-nominee Kanchi Wichmann. The film was released theatrically by Peccadillo Pictures in 2011 and has sold internationally to 22 territories. Paris-based sales outfit Reel Suspects is handling world sales. Most recently, Alex produced The Book of Gabrielle by award-winning writer/director Lisa Gornick. The film will have a theatrical release in Germany via Pro-Fun Media in spring 2017 and is due for a UK release later in the year.
65 Wilding Films has a slate of comedy, Nordic-noir and horror feature films in development with diverse and exciting talent, including Tina Gharavi, Roger Hyams, Line Langebek, Miikka Leskinen, Hannah Patterson, Rachel Tillotson, and Kanchi Wichmann. Alex is currently raising finance for a number of projects, most notably Miikka Leskinen’s debut feature Dear Darkness, a co-production with Spier Films (UK) and Serendipity Point Films (Canada), and Kanchi Wichmann’s coming-of-age comedy Normal Love with Maxine Peake attached as one of the leads.
Besides producing, Alex runs Guiding Lights, the UK film industry’s leading mentoring programme. She is an alumna of the EAVE European Producers Workshop and Guiding Lights where she was mentored by Dan Films’ Julie Baines.
Miikka is an award-winning filmmaker and film editor based in London and working both in the UK and Finland.
He graduated from the National Film and Television School (UK) in 2007 and his directorial debut short film Firewood premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in 2008. It was nominated for a Crystal Bear. He also took part in the Berlinale Talent Campus the same year. Miikka’s second directorial short film Small-Time Revolutionary was completed in 2010. Following a successful festival run of over 30 film festivals, the film was broadcast in Finland by the Finnish Broadcasting Corporation (YLE) in 2011. It was also released in cinemas and on DVD in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Miikka’s third short film All In Good Time was completed in autumn 2011. His latest short film The Witching Hour (Juhannusyö) received its national premiere at the 27th Helsinki International Film Festival, international premiere at the 38th Grenoble Short Film Festival, won a Rising Star Award at the Canada International Film Festival and will also be broadcast by the Finnish national broadcaster Yle in May 2018. He is currently working on his debut feature Dear Darkness.
Apart from directing Miikka works as a film editor. His projects have won nearly 100 international prizes and been selected into the Cannes Film Festival, Venice Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival and Edinburgh Film Festival. Of these, Virunga won a Primetime Emmy and was nominated for an Oscar and a Bafta in 2015. The documentary was executive produced by Leonardo DiCaprio and distributed internationally by Netflix. In the past year Miikka has edited Dylan Howitt’s critically acclaimed feature-length docudrama thriller Out of Thin Air for Netflix, BBC and RUV, and a 4-part docudrama crime series The Talwars: Behind Closed Doors for HBO.
Visit Miikka’s personal work Website.
