"Free Skate is a brave and realistic coming-of-age story of a young woman set in the figure skating world. The film not only discusses the practice methods, psyche and human rights of the athletes but sheds light on the unfortunate connection between female sports and human trafficking, which we have become increasingly more aware after the rise of the #metoo movement. Our aim was to make a European sports film that doesn’t just glamorize the sports, but dares to dig deeper into being a real human being in the sometimes overly demanding professional sports. There’s well enough superhero films in the world and quite a few sports films fit that genre more than well. The least we wanted to do was to make another superficial film where we see the protagonist champion through an artificial story without any basis in real life. It was an imperative for us to dive into the suffering and cheris the pain so that we could truly celebrate the joy of succeeding and becoming something new.”

Roope Olenius

Director, Producer