Finnish filmmaker Mikko Mäkelä proved himself a promising gay movie director when his debut film, A Moment in the Reeds, first premiered at the London Film Festival in 2017. A subtle, yet no less sensual, queer romance about a Finnish university student, who spends one summer renovating his father’s lakehouse, and a Syrian refugee hired to help out. A Moment in the Reeds foremost demonstrated Mäkelä’s intentionality as a director. Between casting gay actors to play gay characters and examining Finland’s political landscape at the time, there was a desire for honesty in his film that, in hindsight, would be a defining feature of late-2010s LGBTQ+ cinema.