Care and Control

Eero Yli-Vakkuri’s documentary Care and Control (53 min, 2026) follows the lives of police horses between 2016 and 2021. The observational documentary explores how police horses are desensitized to frightening stimuli and how they are used to de-escalate conflicts between people. Animal-assisted law enforcement is a widely criticized aspect of frontline police work. Footage of the mounted police’s daily life has been filmed in various parts of Helsinki, for example outside of Lou on Vaasankatu and elsewhere in the Harju district. The documentary film is the final part of Yli-Vakkuri’s Trans-Horse project, which began in 2014 and examines contemporary horse culture.