The Helsinki Effect

A meaningless conference that changed everything...

In the summer of 1975, thirty-five world leaders gather at Finlandia Hall in Helsinki for an unprecedented three day Cold War extravaganza: The Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe, sometimes referred to as The Helsinki Accords, or known by the sexy acronym CSCE. After years of exhausting negotiations in Helsinki and Geneva, here they all are to sign the final agreement. Ford, Brezhnev, Wilson, Honecker, Trudeau, Palme, Ceausescu and Tito among others, with Finland's Big Cahuna Urho Kekkonen as host. Happiest of them all, by far, is Leonid Brezhnev of the Soviet Union. Little does he know that he is about to make a serious mistake. 

The CSCE was tainted by controversy and contradiction from the get-go. The Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn said the agreement was the "funeral of eastern Europe" and The New York Times called it "misguided and empty". Most critics, including the highly skeptical U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, would however change their minds later. As it turned out, the CSCE marked the beginning of the end for the Soviet Empire. 

The Helsinki Effect is a satirical all-archival essay documentary that, through the lens of this conference, offers a fresh and comedic perspective on The Cold War. Based on hundreds of hours of archival footage, countless declassified memorandums of conversation (reimagined through Al voice simulation technology) and guided by a highly subjective and cheeky director-narrator, the film deconstructs the anatomy of this often misunderstood diplomatic process, and reveals how it came to impact the world in a decisive way. 

The motifs that take shape in the film are familiar from our present day reality: realism vs. principles; hope vs. cynicism; peace vs. imperial anxiety. At its core, The Helsinki Effect is a story about how boring conferences can change the world. 

Director: Arthur Franck
Producers: Sandra Enkvist, Arthur Franck, Oskar Forstén, Anja Dziersk, Stefan Kloos & Thorvald Nilsen