The Juror, nominated by the Executive Board of the Finnish Association of Architects, is a public figure who is a recognised expert in an area other than architecture. The winner is selected from a shortlist of projects chosen by the Pre-Selection Jury.
Film director
Klaus Härö is one of Finland’s most admired film directors. His feature films have won dozens of awards at international film festivals, including the prestigious Crystal Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and the Ingmar Bergman Award, chosen by the maestro himself.
Härö’s first feature film Elina: As If I Wasn’t There (2003) was a Swedish-Finnish children’s film. t was a co-production, just like Mother of Mine (2005), a drama about a boy sent to safety in Sweden during the war. International production teams have been more the rule than the exception in Härö’s career.
His first all-Finnish film shot in Finland was Letters to Father Jacob, which premiered in 2009. The film won the Jussi Award for Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Music. In the summer of 2022, the film was voted the most gripping Finnish film of the 21st century in a poll carried out by the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper.
Recurring themes in Härö’s films have been children and young people in a complex adult world, and the invisibility of the weak. In his own country, Härö has received the Hand of Humanism Award (2006) and the Engel Prize for Church Art (2012).
This autumn will see the opening night of his latest film My sailor, My love. A Finnish-Irish co-production, it will be Härö’s first English-language film. Of his altogether eight feature films, four have been been chosen as Finland’s submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The Fencer was shortlisted for Best Foreign Film in 2016 and received a Golden Globe nomination the same year.