Feelings of grief bubble up for Mikey as his Mother isn’t there to share a special moment with him. Mikey’s Father, who knows what’s up, has a trick up his sleeve to help Mikey process his mourning. However, the trick works better than expected and leads Mikey’s father to question if there was more to it than just pretend.

Director’s Statement

The short film Farewell came about already in mid-2016 when Vanessa Vandy wanted to take some scenic footage of the mountains in Norway with her newly purchased Phantom 4 drone. However, after arriving in Norway with her gear she decided to do something more than just film scenic footage – to create material that could be integrated into a possible short film. The concept of the film was vaguely decided upon during the evening prior to her and Rune’s, the actor’s, longest hike. The filming was then done the very next day. Climbing and filming up and down a mountain with a ton of gear turned into a 10 hour filming adventure for her and the actor Rune.

Since there wasn’t much time to write a detailed script during the Norway trip, the script of the main story got finalized out into its final form a few months later when the director was back in Finland, where she usually lives. Since the story required a hill, she decided to film the rest of the film in New Zealand, where her Dad lives. Once in New Zealand, producer Bertrand Remaut from Melopy Films, jumped on board the project and compiled the cast, crew and locations for the second filming day. The second filming day took place in March 2017 and spanned about 6 hours.

Once back in Finland the director finalized the edit together with her post-production collaborators. The graphics artist Sonja worked from Finland while Matic (colorist) and Shamir (sound post production) worked over the web from New Zealand. The whole project got wrapped during late summer 2017.