Cinema Scholars is back with more coverage of Fantastic Fest 2026 and an interview with Markus Lehmusruusu, director of The Squirrel. The Squirrel, a surprisingly sweet sci-fi charmer, celebrated its International Premiere at Fantastic Fest 2026, and it will screen again on September 24th.
Introduction
When you think of a futuristic story that takes place in a technological dystopia, a dark and dismal landscape usually comes to mind. In Markus Lehmusruusu’s new sci-fi charmer, The Squirrel, the director finds a light and quirky story in the middle of some heavy high-concept ideas. The result is a surprisingly poignant and meaningful meditation on nature and humanity.
Pasi seems like your average worker bee. Every day he gets ready for work, makes the same commute, and reports to his cubicle at his tech job. It all feels very familiar until it becomes clear that this universe exists in some not-too-far-off otherworld. A future where nature has been completely depleted, and humans have automated nearly everything. Including procreation. Basically, any part of life that might cause any danger, both physically or emotionally, has been replaced with a nice, easy alternative.
Soon, however, Pasi’s cocoon of oblivion is shattered when he discovers an injured squirrel. Presumed extinct (along with the rest of the natural world) for ages, the sudden appearance of the rodent throws Pasi for a complete loop. Where did it come from? Are there more? What does it eat? As he looks for answers about his new furry charge, Pasi begins to question the strict rules and regimens that dictate his monotonous day-to-day life and future.
Cinema Scholars’ Rebecca Elliott caught up with The Squirrel director Markus Lehmusruusu at this year’s Fantastic Fest. They chat about finding the perfect locations, conveying hope in a dystopia, and why a squirrel is the perfect specimen for the story.
Interview
Rebecca Elliott: Hey, Markus. Thank you so much for joining me today. And happy Fantastic Fest!
Markus Lehmusruusu: Yes, thank you.
Rebecca Elliott: So, The Squirrel. I have to start by saying that so many futuristic films are dreary and dark, but you’ve created such a touching film while still working within that context, with these big, high-concept ideas. Tell me about developing such a lovely, original story in this dark context.
Markus Lehmusruusu: Yeah, I think, because the starting point was personal to me. It was this observation of my own relationship with nature. I had to face the fact that I love nature and, at the same time, I love technology and my modern life and everything that comes with that. I was trying to look at that as honestly as possible. When I started to look at that as honestly as possible, I felt that humor kind of came from it- a tragicomic tone, pretty much. I started to feel so much compassion toward human beings and our species, and at the same time, I felt that we’re doing a lot of really stupid things.
Somehow, from there, I felt that was the most honest thing for me to do. At the same time, I wanted to be with these characters in a way that felt compassionate toward them and also respected their feelings of loneliness or isolation. The squirrel has its own loneliness or isolation, too. But at the same time, I wanted to look at it from this bigger perspective.
I remember thinking about this Chaplin quote: “Life is a tragedy when you look at it from a close-up, and it’s a comedy when you look at it from a wide shot.” That became pretty concrete in this film. When I was directing it, I always felt that we were going to step back from the characters and look at their place in this world in relation to their environment. But I also really wanted it to have this intimate level where we’re actually with the emotions of these characters and respecting their struggle in this world.
Rebecca Elliott: Which is kind of funny, because one of the opening scenes of the film encapsulates the characters’ disconnect from nature perfectly. They’re just so far removed from nature at this point that there’s actual automated copulation happening in the opening scene. It captures the humor you’re going for and that oddball vibe, but there’s also commentary there. And from afar, it was more funny. If we were too close up on that, it might be a little too much.
Markus Lehmusruusu: Exactly. That was one of the challenges with this film. Writing the script in a way that you sense the humor in the script. A lot of it, to me, also comes from thinking as a director. I’m thinking that the humor will come from the rhythm, from the way we shoot it, or from letting a shot go on too long so that it becomes humorous that way. But when you write the script, you have to convey that to the reader also—that this is funny, that it’s absurd, and that the humor comes from the situation.
Futuristic Aesthetic
Rebecca Elliott: Of course, since it’s a futuristic tale, you have this hyper-modern aesthetic, and it’s mesmerizing. It’s so well done and beautiful. It looks like you used existing locations, so I first want to ask about that. Tell me about working with the location manager to find all these buildings with hyper-futuristic and/or serious Brutalist architecture. You have some incredible locations, and the way you capture them fits this universe you’re creating so well.
Markus Lehmusruusu: Well, thanks. It’s great to hear. First of all, we didn’t shoot a single shot in Finland because this was a co-production. We shot the whole thing in Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Basically, we were looking for locations for two years. We started by going through cities in Europe, asking, “Where can we find this?” I knew I wanted real locations. I didn’t want to do a green-screen film or something. I really wanted to do as much on camera as I could.
We were looking through cities, and then we found Leipzig in Germany. I remember that was one of the first places where we felt there was something there. The DOP of this film, Max Smeds, said that he’d been there and there was something about it that kind of felt like this world. From there, we started to look into that. But at the same time, you’re building the co-production, so you’re kind of going hand in hand with finding the things you could shoot there and finding the financing at the same time.
It’s basically building this puzzle of different places. When we got some pictures from there, we went to scout. We did a lot of scouts with the producer and the set designer, just going through places. Then you find these absurd things. I remember when we were already shooting, we were driving to the next place through the countryside in eastern Germany. It was fields, and then we came to an old village, and I was like, “I don’t even remember—what are we going to do here?”
But there was this super nice, modern school building in the village. Inside that school building was this whole universe of really cool places that we could use. So it was really a lot of work to find the right places, but also, as you said, to make them come together into this coherent whole. I think in the beginning of the film, we’re basically jumping from a studio set into a university in eastern Germany, and from there we cut into these escalators in the Netherlands, and from there to another set of stairs in eastern Germany. In the end, you kind of lose track. At some point, when you’re editing the film, you lose this realization of how much work it actually was to make it seem so simple.
Bright Production Design
Rebecca Elliott: Well, I appreciated it. I was thinking, “I know all these locations are not in one city.” They must have been all over the place, and it’s so well done. It exists in a different way than something that’s created with ones and zeros. Also, about the sets- do you and your production designer have a favorite color of white? What was it like shooting those bright white interiors?
Markus Lehmusruusu: Yeah. Filmmakers have been saying that you shouldn’t do all white, you know? It’s like a big no-no. They also say you shouldn’t film with animals. So I had both of those things. But I mean, the whiteness, I think it felt like a really brave choice to do that. And the production designer, Michael Randel, who is German and a really great production designer, was also really brave about pushing it in that direction.
He was working really hard to bring in textures and different shapes and types of white because you don’t want to do this kind of one-dimensional white box. You can do a lot of things with the light, the materials, the textures, how the practical lights work with the cinema lights, and how you create that atmosphere. So we were working really hard on making all these different white locations work and giving them their own characters at the same time.
But somehow, when we were shooting, I didn’t actually think about it so much anymore. I remember that the great moments were when we were designing it. At one location, when we were scouting, we came to this really minimalist, empty, really cool architectural place. Michael was with me, and I asked him, “How do you see this? What should we do here? How should we fill it up?” Michael just looked at it and said, “Nothing. Just a vending machine.” I was like, “Okay.”
Stunt Squirrel
Rebecca Elliott: That fits into the budget a lot better than a room full of white, clear desks with crazy tech and keyboards. Speaking of which, you have so much cool futuristic technology, from robotic pieces to all kinds of other things. But first I want to know- please tell me the squirrel isn’t completely CGI.
Markus Lehmusruusu: No, no. We had four rescue squirrels that were Italian rescue squirrels that we were shooting with. We had this amazing Hungarian animal wrangler, Árpád Halász, who is a really experienced guy. He’s worked on Poor Things and Blade Runner 2049. He found these squirrels from Italy, rescue squirrels, and he started to get to know them because you cannot train them. You just kind of familiarize yourself with them and their personalities, because all four of the squirrels were different. They had their own personalities.
We went through the plans and thought about what we hoped they could do. Of course, we already had things like, “It’s going into the pocket of the hoodie,” or “It’s going into the briefcase,” or “It’s getting stuck in the shoe.” I was trying these things, and sometimes he would say, “This will not work,” or “We have to adapt,” or “We can shoot it like this.” We were, at the same time, adapting our plans around that. It was super amazing to shoot with the real ones because, you know, the whole concept of the film is that we have this artificial world, and then this one real thing comes in and breaks everything. So it has to be real. This one thing had to be real, and the squirrel is that.
It was also amazing to witness because, of course, the way we shot and when we were shooting, we had to be really sensitive to the squirrel and adapt our own process. Filmmaking is usually really efficient, and time-wise there’s always this pressure, but when the squirrel came to the set, everything kind of stopped. Nobody could move because we were in a studio, and all the sounds would be distracting to the squirrel. So everybody had to stop whatever they were doing in the whole building.
Then we were in this mini-unit. Me, the DOP, the actors, and the animal trainers in this room with the squirrel. And the squirrel is there, and we’re in Germany with, like, a million crew members, and, I don’t know, a day costs €50,000 or something. And then there is this one squirrel, and we’re just hoping that it does something that we wish it would do. So it was, of course, stressful to me, but at the same time, really beautiful and really in line with what I was trying to say or explore with this film.
High-Concept Genre Storytelling
Rebecca Elliott: Yeah, that makes me so incredibly happy to know that you actually used a real squirrel—or squirrels, plural, in this case. That’s so wonderful. Speaking of the bigger themes of the film, about losing a connection with nature and the world around us, some of those metaphors actually kind of snuck up on me a little bit. The whole metaphorical hamster wheel, and then the literal hamster wheel, and all of that. I do ask this question a lot, but why do you think genre filmmaking, and sci-fi in particular, is such a great medium for covering these sorts of high-concept stories?
Markus Lehmusruusu: I think you can have this kind of distance from what’s going on, even though you are, of course, writing from your own observations or your own thoughts about life. What’s happening with you and the people around you. To me, this film was, when I started to do it, more of a timeless metaphor than a hard science-fiction film. That was always a really liberating and inspiring thought. That I can kind of get rid of everything around it and focus on this observation that I have from my own feelings and contradictions, and from this whole, in many ways, twisted relationship with nature and also with other people.
I started to write this in 2018, so it was two years before COVID. Then COVID happened, and I was like, “Okay, this is getting too real now.” It’s amazing, in a way, that you start from a distance, but then you realize that you’re dealing with things that are actually happening right now.
Rebecca Elliott: Right. It’s almost like you have to suspend disbelief to download all of these big issues that are out there, things that sometimes we don’t even realize are happening right now.
Markus Lehmusruusu: I’ll say one more thing about that. I also always wanted this film to be really light on the surface level, to have this humorous, simple story that’s easy to watch, entertaining, and fun. This genre gave me a great tool to do that. You can have this entertaining, mysterious level of “What is this world?” or “What’s going on?” and you’re finding that out. But at the same time, under that surface level, you can go deep into philosophical themes or whatever.
The Perfect Specimen
Rebecca Elliott: So more like an allegory versus a cautionary tale. It’s more fantasy than commentary. Okay, one more question: why a squirrel, of all animals in the world? Why a squirrel?
Markus Lehmusruusu: I think it’s a perfect animal to show both sides of our relationship with animals, or how we project things onto animals. A squirrel is really a cute animal in a way, and it awakens this kind of pet fantasy. At the same time, it’s a wild animal. It’s an old species, you know? You cannot tame it. That contradiction was really interesting, and I think it was really at the heart of this whole film.
Rebecca Elliott: Right. They’re ubiquitous. They’re everywhere, but yet we don’t really have them.
Markus Lehmusruusu: Yeah, exactly. And one really interesting thing is that in Finnish we say “oravanpyörä,” which is like “the squirrel’s wheel.” It’s the same thing as the rat race or the hamster-wheel idea. It’s a squirrel’s wheel. So, of course, it had to be a squirrel, dragging us into the squirrel’s wheel.
Rebecca Elliott: Well, all right. I think that’ll do it! Thank you so much, and I hope you have a wonderful festival. Good luck with everything.
Markus Lehmusruusu: Thanks a lot, Rebecca. It was a pleasure.
The Squirrel will screen again at Fantastic Fest 2026 on September 24th. As Finland’s official entry for Best International Feature Film for the upcoming Academy Awards, The Squirrel is sure to make its way to a screen nearby soon. So, keep an eye out for the U.S. release of this cleverly uplifting film.
