is a feature length family audience CGI animation. With the budget of over 6 million euro, it is the biggest ever film project in Finland. Its production company is Animaker Oy, which is a project company formed jointly by Cinemaker and Anima Vitae, the leading animation studio in Finland.

NIKO & THE WAY TO THE STARS is an adventure of a young reindeer boy who is looking for his father. The boy has never met him, but believes dad to be one of Santa’s famous Flying Forces.

The script is written by Hannu Tuomainen and Marteinn Thorisson, the film is directed by Kari Juusonen and Michael Hegner and produced by Hannu Tuomainen and Petteri Pasanen.

NIKO is a Finnish-German-Danish-Irish co-production; Cinemaker and Anima Vitae produced it together with Ulysses, A.Film and Magma Films. In Scandinavia the film was distributed by Nordisk Film, with premiere in Finland on 10.10.2008. In Finland only NIKO got over 230.000 admissions and sold a record number of DVD´s at its release in 2009, over 140.00 pieces.

NIKO is most widely distributed Finnish movie of all times. German sales agent Telepool has sold the distribution rights to far over 100 countries in Europe, Far East and American continent, including US, where it was bought by The Weinstein Company.

During first two years NIKO has got over 3 million cinema viewers, with more then 2000 prints world wide. Biggest successes the little reindeer boy met in Germany and France, with over 700.000 and 600.000 sold tickets.

Movie´s homepage >>

See the first Finnish teaser >>

To the pages of the animation studio Anima Vitae >>