The DocPoint Apollo Award to Iikka Vehkalahti

The long term producer of YLE Dokumenttiprojekti, Iikka Vehkalahti, will be awarded with the DocPoint Apollo Award. The award is handed to a person who has contributed significantly to Finnish documentary film and earned credit on the field of documentary film.

Vehkalahti is awarded for fostering the Dokumenttiprojekti as well as for fighting for the funding and visibility of Finnish documentary film in YLE and at international forums. He has promoted Finnish documentary film around the world, supported young documentary film makers with all his heart and worked for the quality and content of Finnish documentary film with his whole personality. Vehkalahti has also emphasized the meaning of high quality documentary films in the programme of YLE.

Iikka Vehkalahti is a documentary film maker who has been working with hundreds of films as a screenwriter, a director, a producer and an editor since the beginning of the 80´s. He has produced the YLE Dokumenttiprojekti since 1998. Vehkalahti has been involved in the international film projects Steps for the Future and Why Democracy as well as in the Kolmas Ulottuvuus -project. At the moment Vehkalahti works as a Visiting Professor of Journalism at the University of Tampere. The aim of the professorship is to develop the field of journalistic television documentary.

As has been the tradition, the award-winner will put together the Carte Blanche – a series of films for the DocPoint festival programme. In previous years the Apollo Award has been handed to the production company Epidem (2009), to Jörn Donner (2008), to Ilkka Kippola (2007) and to Jarmo Jääskeläinen (2006).