An actress, Seidi Haarla, shares her experience of losing unemployment benefits after submitting a job application in the form of a self-tape, illustrating the challenges faced by actors in the current job market.
In a recent discussion with Helsingin Sanomat, actress Seidi Haarla highlighted the difficult employment landscape for actors in Finland. haarla has been proactively seeking work during her unemployment, even creating a self-tape to showcase her skills and abilities, which is essentially a video job application. However, the authorities deemed this act as employment within her profession, leading to a several-month suspension of her unemployment benefits.
Haarla's story reflects a common struggle in the creative industry, where traditional forms of job application may overlap with artistic expression, complicating the understanding of what constitutes 'active job seeking.' Despite her challenges, Haarla has adapted to the uncertainties of freelancing and the back-and-forth between employment and unemployment, even undertaking jobs abroad such as in Lebanon, albeit with little financial compensation.
In recent years, Haarla's talents have been recognized, as she won the Best Actress award at the Jussi Awards for her role in the movie "Hytti nro 6" in 2022. She was also honored with the Shooting Star award at the Berlin Film Festival, which is given to promising young European actors. Haarla's experiences underline the larger issues faced by artists in Finland, particularly in terms of job security and the understanding of their labor within economic systems.
