Lynx Man

Synopsis

A long-bearded Finnish recluse sweats out demons in his sauna when he’s not crawling around the forest floor at night with hidden cameras to document the elusive and endangered lynx. Tripped and cinematic excursion into a man’s inner universe.

As a Finnish counterpart to Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man’, Hannu has a love and connection to nature that surpasses most. It is the rare lynx in particular that has taken hold of Hannu’s heart – so much so that he actually claims he can speak its language. So when a dead lynx appears in his forest, he puts on an animal mask, crawls down on all fours and sniffs his way to the mystery through the mulch and undergrowth. With strangely beautiful footage captured by hidden cameras throughout the forest, ‘Lynx Man’ paints a colorful and vivid twilight picture of the nature around us – and of man’s impact on it. Because no matter what Hannu does to live in harmony with the animals, he cannot hide himself from belonging to the species that is the lynx’s worst enemy. It makes sense that most of Juha Suonpää’s atmospheric films take place in the twilight between dream and reality. Here, the enormous forests come to life in Hannu’s hypnotic Night Vision recordings of the lynx’s movements.

Warning: This film contains a depiction of partial nudity.