“You don’t know where you end and they begin,” she says. “You don’t have any personal boundaries. You just let everybody step on you.” It’s a trait the director recognizes in herself, noting that “when I’m faced with some kind of threat or fear of violence, I tend to make jokes or escape in a way that I am protecting myself.”<\/p>\n
Tervo, who won praise for the complex and nuanced characters at the heart of her female-centric romcom debut, “Aurora,” which played at SXSW, wanted to bring that same vulnerability to Niina, an average woman who suddenly finds herself thrust into the corridors of power. <\/p>\n
“I wanted to write a fragile and insecure woman,” she says. “I didn’t want to have this superwoman. She’s very strong. She finds the strength inside her, but these things are also really scary.” Tervo describes Niina “as a proactive hero in the midst of these men’s war games,” but also as a woman who is curious and funny and “has a chance to prove — mainly to herself — that she is capable.”<\/p>\n
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