Joonas Berghäll (Co-director/Producer) studied film production at the Tampere University of Applied Sciences, School of Art and Media in Finland and founded the production company Oktober Oy in 2004 with fellow directors Katja Gauriloff and Mika Hotakainen. Steam of Life is his second film after Freedom to Serve (2004), also co-directed with Hotakainen. As a producer, Berghäll has seven films to his credit, including The Smoking Room (2007) and A Shout Into the Wind (2008). Among his latest projects as a producer is Canned Dreams by Katja Gauriloff, a lyrical and episodic documentary that paints a portrait of European workers through the journey of canned ravioli.
Mika Hotakainen (Co-director) graduated as a fiction director from Helsinki University of Applied Sciences in 2004. He has been working in the television and film industry since 1998 and is co-owner of the production company Oktober Oy. With Joonas Berghäll he co-directed the feature-length documentary Freedom to Serve, released in 2004. His latest documentary, Loose Wires, is about marginalization.