“LDS Folk Are the Same Whether They’re North Americans or Finns”: Tania Anderson on Her Sundance-Debuting Doc The Mission

World premiering January 24th in the World Cinema Documentary Competition at this year’s Sundance, The Mission marks the feature-length doc debut of Helsinki-based writer and journalist Tania Anderson, who, on a cold winter day back in 2016, happened to pass by a pair of English-speaking young men in familiar suits discussing the perils of temptation. Which prompted the open-minded British-Swiss-American to wonder not, “What the heck are Mormon missionaries doing in Finland?” (my first question), but “What makes them tick?” And from this combination of curiosity and accidental eavesdropping the idea for The Mission was born. To find out more about the film, which follows four American LDS teens from home, to the Church’s Provo, Utah training center, to a staunchly secular nation half a world away – and also how exactly the non-LDS director and her crew managed to gain such unprecedented access – Filmmaker reached out to Anderson a week before the doc’s online festival launch.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.