Discoveries from Finland World Cinema

Olli Suominen fancies his teacher and other shenanigans.

Jensse, Sirje, Mutanen, and Sami are childhood friends and veteran bandmates. Sirje is getting married, and the band is getting back together one last time. They could fix past mistakes, revive old relationships, or take the final step toward adulthood.

Refugees from the Caucasian republics, Armenians, Azerbaijanis and Russians, meet on the shore of the Black Sea: they work as shop keepers, life guards, karaoke singers, or just enjoy their holidays. It all happens at a place called Broadway, which is no-where to be found on a map, not even the most detailed ones. The temporary inhabitants of Broadway construct a whole world en miniature, consisting of small carts, tents or booths parked in close, haphazard rows. The scenery, which is put up for a few weeks during the summer, bubbles with life – and in no way corresponds with ordinary daily life in Russia.

Reminiscences from a few people convicted to the Siberia prison camps.

An exemplary reconstruction of a historical turning point. Time and again, the images and the remembered stories.

An artist sits in her studio watching three screens streaming live from a car park cave. On the screens, a transparent entity appears that does not seem to belong there. She names it ‘the transformative figure’ because it seems to transform its body according to its surroundings. She realises that the figure gathers information in the form of observations, thoughts and feelings and it is on its way to give the information to the artist. The Transformative Figure comes closer and closer and is finally entering the artist's private home. The film raises a question of how artistic inspiration works?

A film about spiritual exercise on a one-mile paved loop in a park. The Six Day Run is one of the most extreme individual endurance sports dating back to the 1870s. The film is based loosely on The Book of Genesis in the Bible (Gen. 1:1 – 2:3).

"Everything In Between" follows a group of filmmakers that are passionate about their work. An intimate portrait of film making and the deep trust that develops in these exceptional circumstances.

Two men and a woman, all rallye drivers, get too closely involved, competing in the race and in love.

Kanervala, located in Särkisalo, was a summer resort for railway workers. The drama documentary presents Kanervala in the summer.

A cadaverous stand on the chances of survival of Finnish short film. A pathologist performs an autopsy on the deceased short film.

A lone traveler ends up in a hotel room terrorized by her own fears.

A documentary film about Finnish poet.

Jake Crusher is a cop from the 80's who gets sucked into a VCR where he becomes Video Cop.

Aliens from outer space crashes on Hervanta and starts to transform people into flesh eating creatures.

Eemeli, a lazy farm boy, is sent out into the world by his parents due to poor potato harvest forecasts. On his way to the logging camp, he meets Tommi, a man from Helsinki who sells razors and is headed to the same destination. At the logging camp, the loggers and Eemeli perform several musical numbers and flee from Isabella, the cook, who is hungry for men.

Sami directs a reality series but ends up as the main character.

Puolanka, a tiny village in Northern Finland is famous for its population decline, but also for its dark sense of humor about it. As the long summer evenings stretch out, teenage boys celebrate their new driver’s licences by endlessly circling the same few streets, while an older generation of local gents, proudly known as The Parliament, has already parked itself permanently at the petrol station café. Here, hunting and the legendary “Pussy Rally” aren’t taboos but badges of cultural identity. The only mystery that seems unsolved: where have all the women gone?

An in-depth documentary revealing all the secrets behind Marko Mäkilaakso's film THE CREEPS.

It took a dozen years, but in 1952 the greatest dream of sports-crazy Finland finally came true: The Helsinki Olympics happened.

The film tells the story of an orphaned Anu and carpenter Mikko trying to make a living in a small Karelian village in the early 1930s.

A poetic film based on Samuel Beckett's poem "Comment dire - What Is the Word". A young woman travels to her boyfriend to confess her love.

Teenage girl looks for love but doesn't know where to find it.

Animals as Our Neighbors is a wonderful Finnish nature documentary by Petri Merra that tells us about the animals living close to us. Some of them are familiar to us in our daily lives, while others are mostly nocturnal and rarely encountered. What all these animal neighbors have in common is that they have found a new habitat by moving in to live right next door to us.

A PLAN FOR PARADISE is an intimate look at the work process of a renowned architect and his closest colleagues. It’s a study on cultural differences and people trying to overcome those differences. It’s a film which asks important questions but is filled with warm humour.

Jasmin gazes in delight at the screen of the laptop she uses to make video calls with her father in faraway Somaliland. She asks him if there are hedgehogs there—an important question, because soon she and her brother and sisters will be living there. Her father once fled the war in his native Somaliland. In Finland, he found a second home, and his four children were born there. But he missed Somaliland, and was tired of the racism in Helsinki, so he decided to return with his family.

A washed-up musician has to deliver mail at night to make ends meet, all the while pondering about broken dreams and the things that could have been.

Drama film.

A confused teenager, whose life is ruled by drugs and mental disorders is taken on a trip through several visions and worlds by an entity trying to help.

Laila and Lasse are two teenagers dreaming about careers as singers. Lasse's brother Rami dreams about motorbike racing and dates a pretty blond Anjukka. Her father works in the hot new field of TV advertising, which might be a good route to stardom for Laila and Lasse. But then Anjukka sets her eyes on Lasse and Rami sets his on Laila, and many a popular hit melody is sung in between.

The Suomi-Filmi documentary depicts the three-day visit of King Christian X of Denmark to Helsinki. The king visits art museums, the Lotta Svärd Association's field camp, and attends a festive church service at the Great Church.

"Antti Peippo's first documentary as a director is a different kind of tourism film of Suomenlinna fortress - a dark and gloomy portrait of a monument to totalitarianism and oppression." - Short Films by Antti Peippo DvD

Alex Lommo, an Ex-Nato Commando, must rescue his old pal Colonel Fägerlund from the hands of Evil corporation Metacom, which has developed a new terrible biological weapon which turns people into mind controlled zombies.

A reporter starts investigating a murder while making a documentary about a 60's youth gang.

After several years in France, Juho and Anna go back to see their sick father. Juho fears this travel, he did not see him since 15 years and fears what he is going to find.

A teenage boy wonders what love is. He's in love with a girl who is his opposite. The question is whether she is in love with him.

An overconfident chef makes wrong accusations of sabotage when a critic praises his colleague instead of him. The chef stays overnight in the kitchen to prove his work is perfect, but as the night goes on his ego and self-doubt begin to haunt him.

Puustinen wakes up in a small, cramped box. The only thing in Puustinen's wallet is Matti. Matti is a small cat. Puustinen struggles with Puustinen's day-to-day existence: skeletons are peeking from around every corner. Puustinen works at a factory, placing kittens in a box. After a long and hard day Puustinen gets a few coins. Puustinen spends it immediately: on pick-and-mix cat candy, ordering rescue cats online, picking up boxfuls of cats from the post office. In Puustinen's wallet, Matti grows into a gigantic cat that Puustinen desperately tries to appease.

Finnish TV documentary featuring archival interview footage of Jarva and clips from his films

Eliisa Raaska, who lives in the Soviet Union, wants to move to Finland to be with her beloved Mikko Vanhalan, but she does not want to leave her elderly and sick father in Ingria.

The father and mother flee to Lapland to prepare for Christmas, but peace is at a standstill when the children tag along. When Jussi's new girlfriend Viktoria is revealed to be the millionaire's only child, the father does everything he can to make the best possible impression on the family's new daughter-in-law. As one surprise follow after another, the father must put all his “expertise” into play.

Through the stories of Finnish archipelago's inhabitants and glimpses of their lives, and the breathtakingly beautiful images of the islands’ nature, the viewer gets to experience the rhythm and atmosphere of a concrete place that exists today, but that is completely timeless and otherworldly at the same time.

Aino, a pilot intern in her small plane, is assigned on a mission to locate a mysterious lost space probe that has fallen down to earth near the arctic circle. Events make an absurd, surreal, maybe a dadaist turn after which to reach her objectives, Aino and her peers are obliged to search for the answer to the mysteries of the modern human condition. Thus follows a satirical, antimodernist continuum of monologues, mixed-media footage and introductions of modern subjectivity. The film is a flight through the darker sides of fossil-fueled European rationalism, shedding light on techno-capitalist-individualist age of modern alienation, hauntological nostalgies of imagined futures, the profound problematics of translating human communication, the post-human sides of Jean Sibelius – and finally – the reindeers of the north.

Iida, a lonely 9‑yearold girl, befriends an alien creature, a 3D character from a TV series, who is stranded on earth in the world of human beings. The two start a different kind of friendship in which the creature learns that not all human beings are evil and greedy, and Iida learns the truth about her father’s old imaginary friend. Iida and her big brother help the creature build an improvised device to return home, even if this means she will lose an unexpected but dear friend. Little do they know that a few competing international task forces work day and night to track down the whereabouts of earth’s visitors from out of this world to gain access to their vast energy resources.

The end of the 80s, a village in the middle of Finland. 15-year-old Hevari, the only long-haired boy in town, is the coolest guy in the world - at least according to Kake from next door. No-one else seems to agree. Short-tempered Hevari is used to being the laughing stock among the gang and the girls. But when the Friday night comes and there's a disco at the community hall, it's time to go again. Maybe tonight everything will be different.

The Little Saleswoman (1933) is a musical short comedy directed by Georg Malmstén, commissioned by Havin Osakeyhtiö and advertising the company's products. Laundry day is coming up for the Keinänen family. Kalle (Kaarlo Angerkoski), a music student living as a subtenant in the family, stops by the herbalist's shop and falls head over heels in love with the beautiful saleswoman (Martta Kontula). Only a 17-minute excerpt of the film has survived.

"Shows you what these guys get up to in their native Finland and their adventures as they attempt to conquer the world, and win!"

Mom and daughter want the keys back.

A man who has little compassion for his friend's and wife's toothache, soon learns how bad it can be when he gets one of his own.

See how the award-winning hillbilly horror was brought to life.

Hanna Kaihlanen’s vision discovers a fantastic dimension that intersects with the real within the bleak Nordic landscape of Finland, and her expressive editing often loses track of the distinction between the two. The film is inspired by ecological issues and questions humanity’s claims to control and overcome nature: the director follows the chaotic logic of wildlife, like the film’s subject who tracks wild elk.

Wooden knocks are echoing in a frozen landscape when a lonesome man is searching for a tongueling of his own.

A biographical documentary following the life of a young Japanese priest and bar-owner.