Discoveries from Finland World Cinema

Presentation of films that failed in various ways. At the beginning, there is no image other than an audio track, later an overexposed, underexposed, or otherwise failed image.

The district of Molenbeek-Saint-Jean in Brussels has become world-famous as a center of jihadism, but for six-year-old Aatos and his friend Amine, it is a familiar home. Here, they listen to spiders, discover black holes, and fight about what is going to steer a flying carpet. Together they search for the answers to life's big questions. But the brutality of the adult world makes itself known when terrorists detonate a bomb in the neighborhood. Aaatos envies Amine's Muslim faith and looks for his own gods, although his classmate Flo questions him; she is strongly convinced that anyone who believes in God is completely nuts. Gods of Molenbeek is a wonderful portrayal of childhood friendship, inquiry and the creation of meaning in a chaotic time.

Follows the (successful) presidential campaign of Sauli Niinistö from inside of the campaign office.

An experimental silent film made with a team of three. Humanity is being wiped out and the last people left are friends May and Pearl. The main themes of the film are friendship that gives strength and hope, as well as current concern for the future of humans and our nature. Could we start over or was this it?

Young man loses his job as a recruiter at the network marketing hoax. Being forced to leave his employers quarters he ends up in the streets and bumps into a young girl, an outcast who has recently lost her mother. He moves in her shabby flat – just to get through the worst, with no romantic intentions. A fatal mistake, involving a middle-class suburbia, a time bank system and a battered couple change plans.

Several films have been made about the lives of train hobos, but Aleksi Pohjavirta's A Good Day to Die is probably the first Finnish documentary on the subject. The film follows Billy, who travels in a pump on freight trains. In the way of life, the feeling of freedom and letting yourself be carried away by chance are attractive and they make the train bomb strive for a windy ride again and again.

Documentary about the environmental policies and tree-planting campaigns of the Chinese state, and the eucalyptus plantations of the Finnish forestry company Stora Enso in Guangxi province and their impact on the lives and livelihoods of local residents.

Professor Visaoksa's spoiled city kids are sent to the countryside to live with their strict general uncle and learn some manners. The general's buddy, who tells the kids war stories and is nicknamed Sergeant Mynkhausen, finally gets the kids under control.

27-year-old Mona works alone at a remote grill, studies again for the upcoming entrance exams and endlessly misses her spouse Helga, who is on a business trip. A new employee starts at the grill, 19-year-old lively and unbalanced Leo, who in all his likability makes Mona miss her past.

The life of the main character goes off the rails when she realizes that she is being rewarded for her youth and beauty in ways that exceed her other achievements. While trying to find a time machine for her life, she drifts deeper into patriarchal beauty rituals, building her identity and happiness on her appearance.

About going forward.

On a dark night, a man sees a wrecked car on the side of the road, inside which a young woman is dying. The woman asks for the strangest last favor.

The artist Upi Kärri is trying to find one of his works after a decade it went missing.

Danny is an amazing story of an adventurer whom the world loves. The film is a documentary about the colorful, eventful and dramatic life of Ilkka "Danny" Lipsanen, a Finnish popular music artist with an exceptionally versatile career.

The premise of this short documentary by Paula Lehtonen is simple: the artist has invited people to her studio to hang out with a therapy alpaca. Everyone can choose for themselves, whether they want to actively seek contact with the animal and whether they want to entertain or be entertained by the alpaca. The alpaca either responds or doesn’t, in its own manner. With the tender approach, Morrison & Friends invites questions about our anthropocentric worldview and explores the coexistence of species.

Three childhood friends reunite and spend a summer together, but one of them hides a painful secret.

In a remote area, there is an island that is the subject of a horror story about a child who was expelled there after an atrocity. No one believes the child survived the first winter, but legend has it that even today those who go there never return. Twenty-year-old Mia has just experienced shock and disappointment in her relationship, and after hearing the story, she manages to lure a few thrill-seeking friends to join her for a day of boating, camping and exploring the legend of the island. Once on the island, they face their doom one by one.

An existential road movie based on Veijo Meri's novel Peiliin piirretty nainen (The Woman in the Mirror, 1963), following the life of a taxi driver from one evening to the next morning.

In this comedy set in an urban environment, a bachelor household unaccustomed to housework seeks a maid. Unbeknownst to each other, engineer Arvi hires Helvi, a music student, and Martti, a master's degree holder, hires Aili, also a master's degree holder. When journalist Salomon hires Manta as a maid, chaos ensues.

The year is 2005 and the population of earth has almost expired due to the lethal virus. The only way to survive is to be constantly drunk. Our hero roams the earth and fights against evil mutants!

Docent Einar Koskimaa is applying for a professorship in odontology, or dentistry. He is not selected for the position because his wayward daughter Lotta Koskimaa has caused a scandal at the school dance. Frustrated and estranged from his wife, Einar falls in love with candidate Raili Tervola, who is also liked by the docent's student son Viljo Koskimaa.

Story of first love affair during summer school holidays, in a pastoral setting.

Digging up the memory of the Finnish Civil War in 1918, Grey Wolf tells a historical story with a modern twist. When Viktor Stark, a peaceful writer of the conservative Whites, finds a wounded enemy soldier hiding for his life, Stark’s values and loyalty are measured against each other. Will he choose a higher moral or otherness? The answer is revealed in the final scene that turns the whole world around. Grey Wolf is set in history, but truly, it tells about us.

Hese, the shy owner of a video company, travels on a moped to film a commissioned Christmas party. From the steps of his office, Hese finds an anonymous Christmas present, a Hese slipover, and begins to find out who it is from.

A 2015 Finnish short film.

The film portrays how wild, free and beautiful the aging body is, how pointless the fear of wrinkles and skin folds is. Ode to Age is a dance film about elderly women who have had enough of the colorlessness of life. Together, they take off their everyday clothes and by joyful and undisciplined throw themselves into the Finnish summer.

The Suomi-Film documentary H.M. The Visit of H.M. Haakon VII of Norway to Finland (1928) depicts the three-day visit of King Haakon VII of Norway to Helsinki and Tuusula. During his visit, the king visits the University of Helsinki and art museums, participates in a garden party in Kaivopuisto, and watches a football match between Finland and Norway.

A family tries to manage through the weekly grocery shopping without disintegrating. The moment they enter the supermarket the children go off in separate directions and the parents face the overwhelming load of merchandise under the time pressure of a closing store. Will they be able to gather the supplies for existence and still come out of the store with all the children? The story is also a metaphor for the five classical elements earth, air, fire, water and aether, of how they strive into different directions but still keep together as one.

Maryam, a rebel leader in an archaic world governed by ruthless religion, is set to prove that the god hovering in the sky is a lie. But she is stopped by a holy warrior that turns out to be her lost father. Soon their lives change as they are about to find out a secret only a god can keep.

Anni, the daughter of the Heikkilä family, is forced by her father to give up her plans to marry her beloved farmhand, Matti Väliportti. Anni's life becomes a struggle when her father's choice of husband for her, Toivo Erkkilä, turns out to be a violent alcoholic.

A film about the destiny of cashier disappointed in love.

Mauri Miettinen and his wife Anja are living in a happy marriage. Everything changes when Mauri's old acquaintance comes to visit and threatens to reveal Anja's dark past.

Five friends celebrate the growing media visibility of social media witch Lulu, by mocking age-old divination tools, but the fun leads to one of them disappearing. After experiencing inexplicable events, the rest of the group decides to search for the missing person by following the location information shared in a group chat. The journey takes them to the border between reality and unreality, where the natural becomes disturbed and everyday existence becomes threatening. To find the missing person, they must dare to strip themselves of all superficiality and embark on a journey as flawed and imperfect beings. Will that be enough to survive?

The story of one man's struggle after he gets caught in a nuclear fallout and gets sick with leukemia.

On the verge of her marital life, a young woman makes a journey into the night to find out why she has lost her heartbeat and turned golden.

Sinikka, the young mistress of the Lenteelä house, gets into a relationship with her neighbor Antti while her husband Jukka is away at the front. The couple becomes the subject of gossip throughout the village, and Sinikka, feeling guilty, seeks reconciliation from her husband and the community. Her mother-in-law, who is hostile towards her daughter-in-law, also wants reconciliation.

An idle work crew is ordered to go and heat up an abandoned house before it is demolished. A road sign pointing in the wrong direction leads them astray, and the men end up at an empty hotel, where they begin a program of evening entertainment led by Severi Suhonen.

A film about Finnish artist Kalervo Palsa who was completely neglected by his peers and time.

In 1993, Sam Fuller takes Jim Jarmusch on a trip into Brazil's Mato Grosso, up the River Araguaia to the village of Santa Isabel Do Morro, where 40 years before, Zanuck had sent Fuller to scout a location and write a script for a movie based on a tigrero, a jaguar hunter. Sam hopes to find people who remember him, and he takes film he shot in 1954. He's Rip Van Winkle, and, indeed, a great deal changed in the village. There are televisions, watches, and brick houses. But, the same Karajá culture awaits as well. He gathers the villagers to show his old film footage, and people recognize friends and relatives, thanking Fuller for momentarily bringing them back to life.

The conflict between forestry and nature conservation in Finland has been constant during last 20 years. The traditional, freely grazing reindeer herding, dependent of the old forest growth , has been losing its resources but complaint and protests haven't been able to stop this process. In 2005 Saami reindeer herders made an alliance with Greenpeace and established a Forest Rescue Station in the wilderness of Inari. The international pressure from Greenpeace made Finnish forest company Stora Enso stop buying the wood from conflict areas. Kalevi Paadar, a Saami reindeer herder, lodged a complaint to the UN Human Rights Commission.

A man lives alone in a block of flats. He may not be able to put a finger on it, but he is lonely. All this changes, though, when the odd growth he has been ignoring on his side turns out to be something alive and becomes conscious.

Having squandered their share of their father's inheritance, the Honkavaara brothers Paul and Juho plot to take possession of the inheritance received by their sister Elsa. At Elsa's request, a resourceful private detective sets out to track down the missing will.

A documentary on the executions that took place during and after the Finnish civil war in 1918.

A story about young factory worker Tuija, who has recently met an interesting young man. When the death of a friend interrupts a monotonous and carefree life, the strangest week of Tuija's life begins.

Olavi Koskela, a ladies' man, joins the loggers. As a log driver, Olavi travels from place to place, seducing one girl after another and then abandoning them. Only Kyllikki, the daughter of a wealthy family, is able to resist his advances and incites him to challenge another log driver to a race down the rapids. Through Kyllikki, Olavi is forced to face the consequences of his actions and reflect on the meaninglessness of his life.

The director documents the events leading to a reunion with her estranged father.

Old woman looks outside her apartment window and sees her life passing, or dancing, in front of her eyes.

Justiina gives lessons to friends who are avoiding work and sends them to work. Pekka and Pätkä end up in a woodworking factory, where their job is to nail together the legs of a Christmas tree. The men think they will get rich this way, but through misadventures they end up in many different jobs and being chased by a crowd of admiring women.

Three identical brothers are struggling about what to do with the evil fourth brother.

Like it or not, almost anyone who has met a really serious poet finds that they have something about them which sets them apart from other people. It's not just a romantic legend. In wry but basically directionless Finnish movie, Paavo Pentikainen plays one of these ungainly beings, a man whose last published work is decades in the past, who probably hasn't written anything in years, but who still has an uncanny knack for precise observation, "pinning the tail on the donkey" almost every time. In the movie, the poet, accompanied by his young assistant, takes a minor celebrity's swaggering tour of small cultural centers and retirement homes.

The friendship story between an elderly man and a young man and their journey to meet an old front-line veteran who has decided to settle his score with society.

Shelter (Suodji) is an adaptation of an old story from Utsjoki, Sápmi, to the present. It is a legend of what the director´s relative, Ovllá-Ivvár Helander, did during the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918 in Utsjoki. Ovllá-Ivvár decided to fool Death and take his fate into his own hands. Today we are facing similar threats. The protagonist of the film is walking in Ovllá-Ivvár´s footsteps. But at the end, who its really who?

A documentary film about Erkki Kurenniemi (b. 1941), whose career represents a surprisingly natural blend of music, film, computers, robotics, science and art.

An apparent suicide of a successful architect prompts an investigation into his death. A young man investigating can't believe that his well-respected boss would take his own life until he discovers that the man had a loveless marriage, another woman on the side, and a general feeling of malaise – a condition caused by the fact that he very nearly sold himself out to the lure of big money.

When two former top orienteers end up in a snowstorm in Lapland wilderness, they face an impossible orienteering task: how to reach your destination when you can't tell earth from sky?

A rustic comedy about a small-town bowling alley entrepreneur who learns that being scammed is not the end of the world.