Discoveries from Finland World Cinema

A story about vagabond named Paul and his journeys in the countryside. He is a real charmer and many women will fall in his lap.

Documentary film about Arndt Pekurinen and the peace movement in the early 20th century. Pekurinen spoke out for pacifism, conscientious objection and peace, and received support for his actions around the world. However, his worldview collided with the nationalist and militaristic atmosphere of the era in Finland. He was considered a troublemaker, a traitor, and a caricature of masculinity. The film is a universal and timeless account of a man persecuted for his opinions. At the same time, it is a description of the weak tolerance of young independent Finland towards dissidents. Pekurinen was executed during the Continuation War by his compatriots on November 5, 1941.

In the early 1960s, Bella, her husband Kajus and their young son, Thomas, spend seemingly endless holidays together. Next year the arrival of new neighbors, Rosa and Gabe and their two daughters, start changing their lives.

The Päätalo film tells the story of Kalle Päätalo, a carpenter and master builder, and his burning desire to become a writer, as well as the long road that led to the creation of Päätalo's first novel. Too much hard work, too little love in his marriage, and too little self-confidence prevent Kalle Päätalo from realizing his lifelong dream of becoming a writer. Until he finds new love.

OK, imagine four men in their 40s and 50s. You there? OK, now imagine them wearing suits and playing on a sandbox as characters aged 4, 5 and 6. Pasanen even has his trademark beard, for Christ's sake!

Young photography model Susanna and her alienated teenage brother Veli spend the summer of 1969 travelling around Finland, mostly with another girl and her boyfriend. Sporting the latest fashions and trendy hairdos, they naïvely observe and criticise the modern consumer society, advertising, fancy boats and summer cottages, country dances, barbecues, and any other phenomena that were supposed to bother angry young intellectuals in those days. The plot and the political agenda are delivered with a cheerful, tongue-in-cheek mixture of documentary observations, fake TV commercials, fake interviews, philosophical voiceovers and titles, and a jazzy soundtrack by the progressive rock group Wigwam.

A TV reporter is murdered when he is eavesdropping on a secret Finnish-Soviet conference. The National Broadcasting Corporation enlists the help of police lieutenant Palmu, who comes out of retirement for this case. However, some have their doubts about the loyalities of Palmu, seeing that he was spotted in a diplomatic soiree in Moscow just a few weeks before the murder.

Canned Dreams shows the multi-branching network of the modern food industry. The Finnish consumer buys a can in the grocery store, but where from far away do the raw materials and packaging materials for the preserves come from - and through how many hands? The film not only traces the various stages of the production process, but gives a voice to the people who work as part of it.

Goodbye Tornio is a vivid depiction of being young, fearlessly following your dreams and figuring things out on your own as you go. Eighteen-year-old Vilma celebrates her graduation from high school, with toasts from loving parents and parties with best friends, before leaving her hometown in Lapland and moving to the big city.

Three middle aged men, long time friends, get together in a normally closed Karaoke bar to drink their failed lives away. Secrets are revealed and sometimes discovered and they sing their miseries one by one during Karaoke sessions. The arrival of a lone woman to the bar will facilitate revealing of the final secret.

A former Red Rebellion leader returns home after being imprisoned for his participation in the Finnish Civil War, but soon finds out that wartime mindsets still linger in the heads of people.

Forever Yours is a film about children who have been taken into custody. Through the children, their biological parents and foster parents, the film depicts love in everyday life. The film explores the invisible bond between a child and a biological parent. Even when a child is taken into custody, the yearning for closeness to the biological parents and need for their approval never seems to disappear. This longing is a form of loneliness that the foster parents struggle to overcome. The film describes the entire foster care process: a child being brought into a shelter home, a teenager’s everyday life in a foster family, and siblings preparing to return to their biological mother, after five years in a foster family.

Actress Roosa Heinonen is heading for her first lead role in a historical drama film called The Pastor. Arriving to the film set, she confronts an unpleasant surprise.

Factory manager Risto Järviö is under his mother's thumb. When his mother forbids him from dancing with factory girl Seija Vaara, Seija decides to make anonymous phone calls to Risto to annoy his controlling mother. Risto falls in love with the voice on the other end of the line and begins to make major changes in his life.

Hard-boiled detective finds himself entangled with a strange cult and macabre rituals.

Valo, who recently moved to Raahe, gets bullied. After rescuing an abandoned dog, Valo finds a friend in it, whom she names Roi. Together, the friends end up investigating the mysterious disappearance of a neighbor boy.

Kiia and Lauri, speeding toward the hospital overnight. Kiia in pain, holding the wheel with one hand and another in his stomach - the birth has started ahead of schedule. Surprisingly, the vehicle collides with something. Kiia fright and brakes, the car swerves before coming to a stop. Lauri rises to the car to check the situation and says he did not see anything. Kiia give birth to a healthy child in the hospital and befriends Hannah with. Hanna's husband has been in the same region hit by a car and drove onto the driver fled from the scene.

Masochists are in for a treat when Spede Productions' most vulgar folk farce hits the screen. Created by no fewer than three first-time directors, the film tells the story of the village of Pölhölä, "where people are even more foolish than in Hölmölä."

Finnish small time criminal gets a mission to get an Asian man from Sweden to Finland. In Lapland the frost gets on the nerves and the mission turns into a deadly arctic chase.

There's this hot ice-hockey guy called Lauri Mäntyvaara. Satu promises she'll do her best, so that her best friend Heidi will get him. You'd think that the picturesque Finnish Archipelago would be the perfect place to discover your first love (and get rid of your virginity), but it will not be easy, if a cynical protein-shake-slurping ice hockey team thinks the target of your desire should focus only on the European Championship, and the only places you can escape to are the pretentious summer wedding parties - or bitter divorce parties.

Mr. X is a rock singer whom the girls Titi and Mari are infatuated with. Jukka-Pekka is writing a novel, and Pontus is researching the events leading up to Marilyn Monroe's death.

In the void of night, a hungry creature looks for food and perpetuates an everyday cycle.

A comedy about a social studies professor opposing a dockworkers strike ending up working at the docks by mistake and having his worldview turn upside down.

Exploration of memories related to food and food making. Three women are preparing dishes personally meaningful to them, while the director's grandmothers recount the tales of what food and cooking meant for them throughout their lives.

Seventeen-year-olds Miku and Elias find themselves, and each other, during a summer in the Finnish countryside.

Newlywed Peppi (age 21) is about to embark on a honeymoon cruise with her husband and closest friends. The journey starts off in good spirits but then Peppi runs into some old friends who bring back unpleasant memories from her past. Suddenly strange things start to happen on the ship. Members of Peppi´s group begin to disappear. Peppi starts to realize that the disappearances are payback from her past; a drug related death she was a part of. The situation gets gradually worse and even Peppi´s closest friends seem to have motives to hurt her. Who can you trust when you can't trust anyone?

The Idle Ones is a profile of contemporary affairs - somewhere on the edge of Europe - in a place where unemployment for some young people is fast becoming a way of life. Covering a period of 18 months, the film follows the activities of a group of young men in their 20s who have finished their schooling and stayed in their home village - they loaf about unemployed since they can´t find any work in the remote district. The main characters are more or less idle young fellows whose stories link together and make up the film. Tinged with humour, The Idle Ones is a story about frustrated but vital young people in a period of transition, waiting for something to happen. For some, the waiting is becoming their life.

Jonathan Ross interviews the inscrutable Finnish film director Aki Kaurismäki at The Midnight Sun Film Festival during the release of 'The Match Factory Girl' along with comments from friends, colleagues and fans including highlights from his previous films.

Pilvi, a single mother, is invited to a “white trash” costume party hosted by her affluent friends. She feels out of place in their world, and as the evening unfolds, her past choices and societal judgments come to the forefront. A phone call later in the night forces Pilvi to confront her role as a mother.

Young hockey player Illu spends his summer in local restaurants, just like the stunning blonde Salme, with whom he and every man in town is in love.

During the spring harvest, a strange man arrives in the village on the shores of Lake Pielinen, carrying a rifle and a backpack. He is a skilled worker, a ruthless talker, and a ladies' man. By the time the autumn snow falls, the village has changed. No one can quite figure out the man. He calls himself Simpauttaja. Based on Heikki Turunen's award-winning debut novel, the film is a tragicomic portrayal of rural change.

Documentary filmed on-set during the making of Aki Kaurismaki's "La vie de Boheme"

Middle-aged Maire's husband spends most of his time abroad on business. Alone in their large house, Maire fills her empty life by absorbing other people's tragedies from tabloid newspapers. Obsessed by the story about a young single mother whose husband was killed and the killer got away with it, she befriends the young widow who would rather forget the whole event and go on with her life.

When Continuation War started in Summer 1941, German soldiers arrived to Oulu. With their charm they conquered women and town boys. Finnish boys communicated with them on many levels: had trades, worked as interpreters, rotated business, spied on German love adventures and fought with each other about the favor of soldiers. In autumn 1944, the war was ending. Germans left Oulu by leaving behind fragile relationships, bastard kids and unfinished businesses. The most shocking of all was the faith of young Jake...

Finnish telefilm adaptation of Gorky’s famous play, The Lower Depths, by director Mikko Niskanen.

A criminal investigator arrives to investigate the murder of Annikki Niemi in a village whose residents remain silent about the killing. Local boss Onni Pukari and his shady associates try to prevent the investigator from finding the murderer.

Twelve-year-old Tommy reluctantly moves with his father from the big city to a small Lapp village - the childhood home of his mother, who has recently died. The village is close to the northernmost wildlife reserve in the world, where Tommy's father will be working on a project to release a captive lynx into the wild. The boy gradually falls under the spell of his new surroundings, and discovers that his mother was involved in protecting the local lynx, and, when his father's project fails, and the lynx is about to be sold, he decides to set it free himself. A dramatic series of events ensues, and Tommy, through his brave actions, regains the trust and respect of his family and the village.

The engagement announcement of Irmeli, an orphan girl who grew up in the barracks, and Olavi, a musician serving in the military, upsets the girl's guardians and the director of the military home, who begin plotting to prevent what they consider an unsuitable union.

Räkä deliver pizzas for a living and spends his free time on moped meetings. In one meeting he meets Liima and together they start working towards the first place in the upcoming race. The moped club MC Helper is born.

The King Without a Heart is a fairytale about of a happy king who has a young daughter and a lovely wife. After the sudden death of his wife, the king becomes so sad that he wants his heart taken out of his chest. The kingdom is turned into an effective society based on reason, and there is no longer place for emotions. When she grows up, the princess tries to make her father see the importance of play and emotions.

Ida is a woman who was adopted to Finland from Africa as a child. Ida is an unemployed seamstress approaching her thirties and still lives at home with her activist mother Kati. Kati wants to fix her daughter's life and offers her a job at her work. Encouraged by her new friend Ville, Ida, however, sets out for Berlin in order to find a job and to prove to her mother that she can manage on her own. Meanwhile, Kati has been told that she is seriously ill, but she does not want to mention it to Ida in fear of standing in the way of her daughter's struggle for independence. Ida wants to have a life of her own, but what will she have left at the end of the day?

The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) was the starting point for the slow but sure collapse of communist authoritarian rule in Eastern Europe. The Helsinki Effect offers new perspectives on the events of the Cold War. The film tells the story of the CSCE process, which had a major impact on the end of the Cold War, and sheds light on secret top-level discussions behind closed doors, through voice simulations using artificial intelligence.

Examines the extraordinary lifelong friendship between Skolt Sámi storyteller Kaisa Gauriloff and the Swiss-Russian author Robert Crottet through the eyes of Gauriloff’s great-granddaughter Katja.

Sten Lehtoja, a married, middle-aged businessman, picks up a young hitchhiker, Elsie, while driving to his summer home. Elsie spends the night and becomes his mistress. Later during the summer, Elsie also begins an affair with Reino, the teenage son of a local storekeeper. Sten offers to divorce his wife, and Elsie, attracted by the prospect of a secure social position, agrees to marry him when the divorce becomes final. One night when the couple are in bed, Reino climbs a ladder and attempts to force his way into their room; he falls and breaks his neck, and to avoid scandal Sten hides the body. But the strain of guilt ruins the romance, and Elsie contacts the police, who arrest her lover.

Friends meet after years apart and go on a road trip, to escape from their everyday lives. The trip takes some unexpected turns along the way, but will they find answers to the questions that are troubling them?

A TV movie by Mikko Mattila.

A story of five Finnish youth growing up during the devastating '90s recession. They live in the small timber industrial town of Heinola. As the parents of these young teens struggle through hard economic times, the five very different youths meet by coincidence to form the punk band Apulanta.

Based on Nikolai Erdman’s banned 1928 comedy play The Suicide, a socially critical grotesque about a man tired of life

A biographical film about Finnish singer J. Alfred Tanner and his path through a failed career as a construction master to become a highly successful couplet singer - the "king of couplets".

The story of Anna, who is searching for true love and meets Lauri on Midsummer's Eve.

A story of the conflict between the old and new orders of living.

A 3rd remake of the film based on the play by Teuvo Pakkala. Tells the story of the lumberjack group and how the lives of villagers and lumberjacks intertwine. Many loving couples are formed between jacks and village girls. At the same time, the farm of Pietola and the house matron, Katri is coveted by malicious Rättäri. He owns the IOU papers for Pietola and tries to get Katri using the IOU as blackmail.

Hanna finds a love letter inside a stolen handbag. The letter is from a lover to a married woman. It is none of Hanna’s business, but still she decides to interfere.

The documentary by Mari Soppela focuses on glass ceilings, a metaphor for the invisible borders between men and women in work life. Talk about glass ceilings is usually associated with women’s opportunities to advance to well paid managerial positions, but the documentary connects itself more broadly to the structural problems of work life from women’s perspective. Glass ceilings are long trials about equal pay, having to continually prove one’s skills, and 85-cent euros. The topic cannot be handled without intersectional crossings: what are invisible glass ceilings for some, are solid concrete for others.

The film tells about members of Finnish women's Lotta Service during the Second World War through the eyes of three young women.

Kuwait’s constitution says that every person has the right to a job, so in some places 20 people are employed for one person’s job. In South Korea, they work so much that a policy has been introduced to turn off computers at the end of the day so that employees can’t work any more. In the US, they give up over 500 million holiday hours each year, while Amazon’s drivers are trying to form a union. Meanwhile, robots are poised to take over most jobs and put the rest of us out of work. Work is so crucial to our identity and what we spend our waking hours on that it is barely noticed anymore. A lot has happened since a group of Puritan priests invented the concept of work ethic in the 1600s, and in the 21st century the very concept of work is in many ways disintegrating. A perfect situation for a filmmaker like Swedish mastermind Erik Gandini, who travels the world to explore what the concept of work means today – if it means anything at all.

In this gloomy scenario about Finland's upcoming membership in the European Union, the country has become a poor peripheral area plagued by energy shortages and civil wars. Escaping the city to his summer cottage with his children and a lady next door, a divorced university teacher is forced to pick up a young delirious woman from the roadside. He soon falls in love with her, only to find out she is a sought-after deserter from a violent guerilla army.

Elmeri Vara from the General Stabilization Party, Selma Vuorinen from the Free Enlightenment Party, and Irja Solanen from the Independent Women's Party are competing for seats in parliament. When young Pertti and his classmates start a campaign with caricatures against Vara and Vuorinen, whom they consider unfit, Principal Reino has to decide whether to support the parliamentary candidates or his students, and how he feels about the candidacy of his beloved Irja.