Fans of the original Sisu film know the insane action that director Jalmari Helander can bring to the screen. Still, somehow, he's packed an even bigger punch with Sisu: Road to Revenge, his sequel that just premiered at Fantastic Fest 2025. The movie stars Jorma Tommila as Aatami, a legendary Finnish Army commando forced to get his hands dirty when his mission to transport the original wooden logs from his old family home is interrupted by the Soviet Union.
The Direct's Russ Milheim spoke with Sisu: Road to Revenge director Jalmari Helander, who spoke about how this sequel elevates the emotional stakes from what audiences saw in the first installment.
Helander revealed that not only are the wooden logs of Aatami's family home "much more difficult to move," but they represent something far "more emotional than a bag of gold," which was the height of the emotional stakes in the first movie.
More interesting tidbits from Sisu: Road to Revenge director Jalmari Helander can be read below, alongside the full video interview.
Sisu: Road to Revenge will release in theaters in the United States on November 21, 2025. Fans of Sisu should also check out Nobody 2, which features Bob Odenkirk's Hutch Mansell dispatching bad guys almost just as efficiently as Aatami.
Sisu: Road to Revenge Director Jalmari Helander Teases Sequel's Elevated Emotional Stakes
"It's More Emotional Than a Bag of Gold..."
- The Direct: "I think it's awesome how this film raises the stakes from the first. Can you tease to the audience, how it does that and what decisions led you to go in that direction?"
Jalmari Helander: Well, I think it's important to have something like emotional for Aatami to do, which is, all that he has left is his home, and he wants to take it back to Finland. It was basically like, because it's more emotional than a bag of gold—what we had in the first one—and also so much more difficult to move. So when I had that idea, I was certain that it [would] start to build cool action, because it's so hard to move and it's so precious. So I think, yeah, it really worked.
- The Direct: "The movie has such a visceral feel to it. When approaching how this movie is going to feel and look, what would you say your mission statement was and what you wanted to achieve at the end of the day?"
Jalmari Helander: Well, that was one of the challenges, because I've always done my films in really big locations, like in the mountains, or in really remote places. But the problem with those kinds of places is that you can't blow everything up there because there are a lot of rules and stuff... So I needed to be somewhere where we can do what we need to do. But the key thing for the whistle approach was to have an open landscape, similar to 'Sisu' one, like, just open wide places where, for some reason, I like to be in those kinds of places...
- The Direct: "With this sequel, what do you feel you were able to achieve with it that you just either never had the chance to do on the first one, or that you just weren't able to?"
Jalmari Helander: That is the speed. Like I really wanted to have a lot of movement that basically we are constantly moving in this film with different like planes and motorcycles, whatever. And I always wanted to film with a lot of movement and speed, and that was my goal.
On Introducing Stephen Lang's Big Villain & Balancing Those Outrageous Moments
"I Think I Find It Really Interesting That He's An Old Dude."
- The Direct: "This movie introduces Steven Lang's big villain [Igor Draganov]. Can you talk about creating that character and how you wanted him to stand out in different ways from what the first movie offered?"
Jalmari Helander: Yeah, I think I find it really interesting that he's an old dude, like, because my first idea was that he would be much younger and a more physical threat, like a kind of a muscle guy. But actually him being old, like Aatami, it really felt good. And we talked a lot about that with Lang about that, how he is and why he is, how he is like that, he's not like evil. He hasn't been evil. It's not, it wasn't his idea to have this war or do all the shit he needed to be done. But it changed him, you know, in a way, because he's been doing so many bad things that it starts to change you.
- The Direct: "What I find so interesting about this series is they're incredibly intelligent in how the action sequences [are] choreographed, how everything plays out. And then there's the added depth of [how] a lot of it is pretty realistic, but obviously some of it isn't. So what is that balance of when you choose to be like, all right, we're gonna make this as close to realism as we can. And then when do you break that and go, we want an outrageous moment? We want him to just do whatever.
Jalmari Helander: I don't know where it comes from. It's just like, it is how it is. But I think the weird mixture of being sometimes very serious with basically everything that's got to do with Aatami's family and his house is really serious, but then I can mix it with, like, really, really weird action scenes, and I'm amazed at myself. Also, that's how well it works, because it could not work also.
The full interview can be watched below:
For more interviews from Fantastic Fest 2025, dive into The Direct's conversation with the cast of next year's killer chimpanzee film, Primate.
