Special Report: The Squirrel (2026)

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Kuollaan kaikki. Kokeile. Se on täysin hyötyä. Hey folks, welcome to the Projection Booth. I'm your host, Mike White.

And today I'm talking with director Marcus Themstrom and actress Mimosa Williamo about The Squirrel, an absurdist sci-fi fable about a man and an antiseptic nature-free future and an antiseptic nature-free future who discovers the last living squirrel on Earth. The squirrel is Finland's official Oscar submission this year, following its premiere at Fantastic Fest. I had a great time talking with Markus and Mimosa, and I hope you have a great time listening. Enjoy. I really enjoyed the squirrel, and I'm super excited to talk with you.

I'm so curious, where did this project come from? Where did the idea happen? It started from my own kind of contradicted nature relationship. I feel that I say to myself that I love nature, but I started to question, like, how do you love something that your whole life is basically designed to separate from you in some way? I started in 2018, and already then, of course, there was this biodiversity loss was accelerating around me.

And I started to kind of, I asked this question, what if it actually didn't matter if we as human beings, could actually replace nature with something that's more convenient to us, you know, and more clean and somehow safe and not so messy. And this thought or idea somehow stick with me. And from there, I think the image of this guy living in a world without nature, finding the last real squirrel kind of came from. The world is just so antiseptic. It has such a great look to it.

Can you tell me a little bit about your production designer? He's Michael Randall, a German production designer based in Berlin, because this is a Finnish-Swedish-German-Netherlands co-production. And we shot this. We didn't actually shoot anything in Finland. We shot in Netherlands, Germany, and Sweden.

And basically almost all of the crew, except the DOP and producers and actors and me, was from Germany and Netherlands. So our production designer, Michael, is from Germany. He's amazing, you know. And I think, you know, I had already done, because I was doing the kind of financing and screenwriting for many years. And I had to do, you know, a concept. drawings and pictures and everything for the application so the world was in my head or on my in my papers pretty i took it already like pretty far but i remember like when i came in and he was just like so i don't know he was so brave and our kind of the kind of humor that he had really matched with the humor that i had and i i just like when we went on and on with the plans, he was always pushing the kind of envelope.

I remember one set or actually we were, I think we were scouting and we came to this one location and we were looking and it was like really minimalistic, really beautiful place, but there was like no furniture at all, anything. And I was looking at it, I asked Misha, like, so what do you see? Like, what do you think, what should we do? What are we going to put there? And he had just looked at the space and said, nothing.

And I was like, okay, are you serious? Yeah, it's nothing. So he was really brave with this kind of pushing the concept, keeping it really strict. And yeah, I mean, it was, of course, finding the locations is the big thing in a film like this, because that's the place where you kind of like create a lot of the possibilities. And we had to be really, also we had to be really creative with that. because we wanted to have really big locations, big sets.

And to get this, we had too many times, you know, go to a place and actually see that if we want to have the office of the kind of boss, we actually build it to a corridor and we just build one wall there to kind of have this kind of big dimensions. And I remember one more really creative thing that came from our DOP was because we were really struggling with this alley area. location which is a big location in this film and we had like three shooting days there and we had we went on and on for like months trying to find it but in the end like our DOP we went to this like in Rotterdam in Netherlands we went to this parking hall and suddenly our DOP looked at the place and he was like maybe we should build the valley here and we were all like what then when we started to look at it we like realized that it's actually just, we built some thin walls there and it starts to work.

So it was a lot like this also, building the visual world. And tell me about getting your cast. How did Mimosa come out to the project? I was casting, I was looking for the actors. It's really interesting, of course, to cast someone like this when you have a world where basically the characters, they don't know what they are feeling.

They are feeling, but they don't know what they're feeling and they're hiding everything behind this wall that they have built. And I remember the thought when I started casting that I need actors who can be, you know, deadpan and not showing emotions. But when you look at them, you feel that there is, you know, something going on behind that surface that we see. And this was actually, it's not that, you know, easy to do first time when I got Mimosa and Miro, the actor who is playing Pasi, into the room together. And I do always casting of the main characters alone so that I have just the camera and I'm there with the actors.

So basically I'm like doing a scene with the actors like we would do it in the shoot. And I remember when I got Mimosa and Miro there, it just came alive. Everything just clicked and I felt like I was doing more shots and I was in the zone of directing and looking and the shots also came to me really easily with them. And I remember after that, I just felt like a really good director because I didn't do anything except take the shots, but they were so good. I felt like, man, am I this good?

And I think this is what good actors do, directors. Markus is also a good director. It's not just us. So it's easy to be good when you have good direction. But I think the first things when reading the script and getting to know when all of you have of the character is the script and we haven't started yet and we haven't been to rehearsals or any sets.

So I think the strongest wish for me was not to make Emilia like a bad person or even if she works for the government and is very strict and follows the rules and obeys and takes her job and herself in that job very seriously. I wanted to keep her kind of human because then when the film goes on and the world starts crumbling when she realizes that all the things are not as she maybe has thought they are, that you are on her side and not just think that she was a little bit evil and now she is turning good. But honestly, I think there was quite a lot already in the script. So it was, she was a well-written character. I didn't feel, obviously I felt, I always, you have to feel a little bit pressured and stressed before you go to work.

But I felt that I had, and Miro also had, the ingredients already to, to, we had a good place where we could start and we had some rehearsals that you didn't always get that. So that was good because, uh. Where Marcus, for example, we reminded us of things like using the senses because that's the word I use out of my senses in everyday life so often that, uh, I haven't gotten to that point in the character development that I would realize that, oh yeah, she has probably only smelled like antiseptic, like the disinfection spray and never had human contact. And that's, for example, in the first scene, I remember it was weird and fun, but the first scene when they meet to try and act in a way that she's closer to a person that she's ever been when she walks past.

And and that's something that you don't get to do in, in, in like the, the everyday work where you, where the story sets in like normal life. So there was a lot of small bits and pieces that the viewers see some of them, some are only in my head. But yeah, it was interesting. One thing we see a lot of you is your face and just some of those amazing reactions, which are almost non-reactions. But I'm so curious, did you have hours in front of the mirror trying to get that face exactly the right way?

Maybe in some technical takes, we went to see like the monitor after the take, but usually we didn't really, we didn't go and watch that. The closeups, especially like, Really, when you're so close to the face, that's where I completely just trust Markus, because he knows if it's good or not. If it's too much, he'll tell me. If it's not enough, he'll tell me, and I'll just try to vibe. Markus, it must have been pretty difficult, especially having that trained squirrel there the entire shoot.

We had an amazing animal trainer. We had this Hungarian animal trainer, Alpad Halas, who is super experienced. He's been working on Blade Runner 2049 and poor things. And he's an amazing guy and the sweetest guy on planet. And he really, he had it all covered.

He had the squirrels and he had actually four Italian rescue squirrels that he basically trained for this film as much as you can train them. But yeah, I really trusted him and we were coordinating with him everything that what we need. And he told us what they can do and what they don't want to do and what we can expect. Of course, he didn't know and he couldn't promise anything because they're wild animals. So they basically do what they do.

And we try to get everything that what we can from them. But yeah, when we then when we were shooting, it was we knew that. we could only use the real squirrels in a closed set, like super closed set. There couldn't be like any holes anywhere. So basically we ended to shoot most of the real squirrel scenes in Pasi's home, which was a studio set. And we could do this like super closed set.

And with the mini unit, it was only me and the DOP and Arpad and his two assistants. And then Mira in the room, the actor. And it was... funny and really stressful at the same time because we had to because they are sensitive animals so they really pick anything up if there's any sound somewhere they instantly freeze so we had to have the whole building nobody could move at all when we were shooting with the squirrels and when you release the squirrels for the first time into the room they really explode and they go through everything that's there they climb the curtains and they looked like all of the place probably looking for food or something and then 10 or 15 minutes later they have scanned the whole perimeter and then they come down and then you can start to shoot and hope that you get something what you like but it was yeah I think the kind of interesting and the most memorable part of that was that it's crystallizing the whole theme of the film to me in a way that maybe we should put our needs, put someone else's or some other animals or species needs in front of our needs.

And those points were like super interesting in that way that the whole crew of 50 people in Germany, a day shooting costs, I don't know, 50,000 euros or something. And we are there, we cannot do anything. We're just waiting for this really small animal to hopefully do something. That works for the film. So it was like I had to taste my own medicine in those moments.

It was a real gift what we got with the real ones. And that was also something that why it was so important to have the real screws was also I knew that we are going to get some stuff we could never imagine. And I didn't want to try to somehow come up with the actual things that they do because that was the whole point to me, that they do what they do, and we have to really adapt to what they want to do in these situations. In a way, it was the only way to do this film, I think. Did you have to augment with digital squirrels as well?

Then we had a dummy, which had this breathing machine inside, which was also interesting, because there were these really tender scenes between the depressed squirrel and Emilie and Pasi, and then we have this sound in the set and the on-set props manager is there behind the sofa pumping this small thing so we had that and then we did this hybrid thing that we combined the dummy scroll with some digital changed the head to the one that we had shot in the with the real ones in the for the blue screen. And then we had, I think, maybe four scenes where we had a full CGI Skrull. And then you have those wonderful props of the dogs as well. I love those. Oh my god.

The working with the dog was even harder than working with the Skrull. That was like a total nightmare. That dog was like... Oh my god. I have so horrible stories about...

It was unbelievable because Oh my God, I don't know if we should go into that because that's something totally different. But just shortly, we realized at some point that the dog is actually Japanese. And it was going, you cannot control it. It's only controllable through voice. And they were like, it was like going to sleep all the time.

And we didn't know how to awaken it. And of course, always when we started to shoot... It did this animation of... And then it just went to sleep and we couldn't do anything. And at some point, somebody realized that it's actually in the time zone of Japan.

And it thinks that it's night when we are shooting. And that's why it's going to sleep. And then somebody realized that it's actually... You have to speak Japan to it and give the commands in Japanese. And Hiro, the main actor, who was actually... traveling in Japan for three months.

So he was the only one who knew some Japanese, and he started to actually talk Japanese to the dog. And it was like, then the dog started to understand Mira, and they had some connection. But that was like super stressful, even more stressful than with the real squirrels. Whenever I hear an actor who says that they had time to rehearse, they just feel much better about the performance. And I'm curious, what kind of stuff did you discover while you were in this rehearsal period?

Props to Markus for this because we didn't have, we had also maybe the more traditional rehearsals where we go through scenes and kind of just decide on the language and stuff like this and read through scenes and talk about them. But yeah, I think my favorite rehearsal was when we met at the office and then me, Markus and Miru drove to the forest pretty close to Helsinki. And we just went to the forest and it started with because we started shooting in Gotland, so we knew already that it's going to start from the end, so that also made it easier to have, we had to have a plan, because when you cannot shoot from starting to end, and there's such a big change when we arrive on the boat to the nature, we walked in the forest, we talked in the forest, and then at some point, we were just not even talking about the film anymore we were just like hanging out and I think that's also very important I the good thing was that I like knew both of you before shooting but that's one of the I think most important things I was lucky enough to get to work with people that I like and like we have the same kind of I think it was it was nice and easy to work with you but also that you have to know people.

It's very hard to go on set and meet the director for the second time when you start shooting or your co-star if we barely would know each other's names and start acting. So I think it was very nice to have also the traditional reading through scenes and talking about the world and how the characters move and use their senses. and talk, but also just to get to know it. I don't think the producers, many producers would say that it's good to just practice hanging out, but I fondly remember the walk in the forest because I think that was a good thing to do. Obviously, Markus is going to need to have the bigger picture. You have to know everything all the time.

It's also better for the film if we know what to do and what you want, and that me and Miro have the same kind of... First of all, that we're acting in the same genre, but also that we have the same understanding. Of the film. How does this compare versus the first one that you did back in, what was that, 2019? That was like this whole...

It was like a family musical comedy film that I made back then. In a way... Super commercial. It was the most watched Finnish film of that year. And it was like super.

Success at the box office. And like that. But I think it was also like a heightened world. Not this heightened. But at the same time.

It's on the verge of fantasy. So I think there's that similarity. And I think there's also this kind of tenderness. In that one. That I feel is here.

Combining somehow. Some honest feelings. even painful emotions to some lighter kind of frame of the story. And I think those are in a way similar in these, but in many ways, target audience is pretty much really different. When did you actually shoot this? I think two years ago.

Is it now? Now it's fall. Yeah, two years ago, right? We started in the beginning of October 24 and shot until. December, beginning of December.

Beginning of December, yeah. How was the post-process? I somehow thought that it's going to be simple to edit. It wasn't. It was super, like, I don't know, it was like super...

Even though it's a simple film, even before the VFX came in, I think it was somehow more complex to me than I thought before. And then, of course, the VFX came in, and that's a really big thing. And I was actually doing myself some temp VFX things for us to edit with, because that was like so important for everything to have it somehow there. But yeah, that's the biggest thing. Compared to other projects I've done with this, it's always when you have full CGI scenes, it's really, I don't like that because it's, you don't know what's coming until they say that now it's ready.

And then you just basically hope that it's good enough and that it comes in the end of the whole process. It's like, I hate to work that way when I don't actually see what it's going to actually look like until the very end in a way. So that was like super stressful to me. But luckily we had really good VFX people also and the producers were really great at that point also. So yeah, it turned out well.

When you're talking about that little pump, did you have to do a lot of ADR to cover that pump noise of the squirrel breathing? Actually, we didn't do a lot. We did some ADR, but not that much, right? You were there for half a day or something. No, mine was done in.

One sitting. And that was mostly the breathing. Also, just my breathing. When did you have your premiere for this? Yeah, March, right?

In Finland, yeah. It was like, oh my god. And the kind of premiere that we had in Finland was like one of the... It was like a dream to me. It was like so nice evening.

And the whole atmosphere in the theater was like, I don't know. I've never experienced anything like that myself. And yeah, we got really great reviews from Finland. And now it's like the Oscar entry for Finland. So there's that.

But yeah, I'm just really waiting for this audience relationship to continue next Sunday in Austin. Is there a website for the film? I'm sure people are going to want to know where they can see it near them. I'm not actually sure right now. I think they're working on it because we started the whole Oscar...

We heard about the Oscar campaign last week, so we are now setting up everything. So I... Our PR manager started yesterday for the campaign. So I think it's basically now starting up. I'm not sure yet how this works.

Mimosa, what's next for you? Right now, I'm on my last full day of holiday in Sicily. I'm sorry to take you away from your holiday. So next for me, I have a nice dinner. But work-wise, I'm mostly doing audio.

Like voice stuff in finland and uh so now this uh being the entry for the oscars is getting me really hyped up because it's been i've had a little it's obviously not a break but as a freelancer sometimes you work sometimes you don't work that much but now i'm doing mostly audio things so i still have something to fill my days with which is. Nice fantastic and marcus how about you do you have your next project picked out. Yeah i have but Actually, I'm working on, I think, three feature films, but now it's basically just seeing how they get financed and how they move forward from here. But I have one which is, in my thoughts, kind of the spiritual sequel to The Skrull, a bit more realistic version of the same team.

So yeah, and then a couple of other ones also. But yeah, working on those feature films. Thank you both so much. This was such a pleasure talking with you and such a great film. Thanks for having us.

Thank you. We are appealing. We are squirrels. We want to gather nuts. But people splatter our guts When they're on a country drive It isn't easy to survive Back in the other day I saw a squirrel get blown away They served him on.

A dinner tray. They baked him into a souffle. Squirrel season opens up today. If you're a squirrel, run away. I don't know what else I should say.

Please call the ASPCA. Fur coats from us are made. Fur is nice, but I like suede. They scrape our fur off with a blade. And never bother with first aid.

We squirrels really like to play. And we like to catch some rays. Please don't kill us, this we pray. We're cute and harmless anyway. Squirrels, we're not delicious.

Squirrels, we are not rad. Squirrels, don't live in palm trees. Squirrels, or in your bathroom. Squirrels, that's all we really. Are is squirrels.

Isn't it fine? I am a squirrel. Please help and save us, we are squirrels. I want to whip out my. Squirrel!