On the 3rd of January 2012 as she was crossing a crosswalk on her way home, my sister was killed by a repeat drunk driver in a hit-and-run. In that instant, the lives of me and my family were cut into a before and an after.

While we were learning to deal with loss, the crash was investigated heavily by the police and it's aftermath was covered by the national media. These investigations have often felt incomplete to me. The police concentrates on minute details, such as crash simulations and blood tests. In media narratives the case was reduced to a persona-driven drama between the innocent victim and the malignant perpetrator. These investigations created a host of documents, materials and narratives around drunk driving and alcoholism in Finnish society, but often disregard the social circumstances around addiction.

Probable Cause is a documentary project that attempts to understand the circumstances surrounding the death of my sister. The project appropriates materials from media and police archives and combines them with aspects of re-enactment and my own visual investigation. Restructuring the media and police narratives highlights the personal, polyphonic versions of reality that constitute these documents. While building a narrative of the perpetrator on the day of the crash, speculation and doubt begin to act as starting points for a reflection on the perception of addiction within Finnish society.  


“Probable Cause,” is produced with support from Arts Promotion Center Finland, The Olga and Vilho Linnamo Foundation and Kauno ry.