Discoveries from Finland World Cinema

A film about the end of the world.

Manjardo, a young Gypsy leader has spent a lively and joyful life with his young women, Glafira and very keen Akris. He will soon be married to the daughter of the master of another tribe, Esmeralda. From this, her mistresses are no more enthusiastic than Esmeralda and Manjardoka, so the parties of this future couple have never even met each other.

When progress meets nature, violence ensues.

Short film based on Tove Jansson's novel.

The candid adventures of a straight filmmaker in world of transvestites, trans-genders and other gender minorities. Documentary explores our traditional gender roles through the experiences of people who challenge them all. Interviews include various Burlesque - artists, female pastor and Europe's only transsexual pro-wrestler who body-slams traditional gender roles in a profession, where the norms of gender are narrowly defined.

In this comedy set in Helsinki in 1940, laid-off office girls Sirkku, Irkku, and Mirkku forget their everyday worries in the company of cheerful musicians Vallen, Jalle, and Nalle.

Documentary short with horror elements describes three people experiencing horrifying events, when unknown intruder enters their bedroom at night.

You always fear that someone sees through you and you are exposed. Or that no-one sees you.

Known for his sharp tongue and controversial statements, Jörn Donner has been an important cultural personality in Sweden and Finland since the fifties. Author, film director, film producer, journalist, critic and politician. Jörn Donner is known for producing Fanny and Alexander and received an Oscar for it. But he has also been known for being bellicose and naturally he fights with the filmmakers Alberto Herskovits and Olavi Linna as they try to film him. He is especially cantankerous when they ask him to do something in front of the camera that he finds inane. He doesn’t want to prostitute himself anymore, he wants to talk! This desire provides a key to this quick-witted man’s incessant restlessness and his quarrels stand as a backdrop that facilitate the dialog Donner wants to have.

Reconstruction and relief activities during the peace period.

Vilma, 22, prepares for the Theatre Academy entry exams, like she did last Spring. Striving for her place in the world, she finds herself in a limbo. There's a Monster stuck within her. She decides to prepare for the exams, despite the scary Monster.

A documentary about director Mika Kaurismäki

A man struggles to transport chairs on his bicycle.

Pena has been driving a truck for 50 years and plans to do so in the future. His memory problem is just a small bump in life's highway.

In a world where astrology is institutionally accepted, a student filmmaker visits her father’s hometown in Russia to learn the time of his birth and finally complete his astrological chart. She is guided by a local astrologer, who has her own agenda.

The protagonist is shredding a pile of documents, then making new paper from the shreddings. The actions of the protagonist are machine-like in this ritualistic act. The soundtrack gives a rhythm for the film. A mantra-like poem is growing letter by letter, slowly revealing the three-sentence structure, and finally taking form of a concrete poem.

Headline Today: Guatemala is a war documentary. Two American journalists: Allan Nairn and Jean-Marie Simon explore the internal armed conflict in Guatemala in 1982. After General Efraín Ríos Montt comes to power the few news about Guatemala that appear in the United States' media are apparently positive. The major American media advertises the image of Ríos Montt as a “born again Christian” with a mission to pacify Guatemala. Nothing is further from reality. The Reagan Republican administration hides from Americans the war aid that his administration continues to provide to the Guatemalan army, despite the explicit congressional ban. The international media remains silent about the dimensions of the war in Guatemala while Ríos Montt, with the approval of the local oligarchy, leads for 18 months the largest number of atrocities and human rights violations against the civilian population.

Every morning thousands of children go to school like canaries in a coal mine, measuring toxicity. The film deals with the chain of harassment and the way we all are broken in our own ways.

A shaman tells Annika that she has hidden gifts. He’s is manipulative and dangerous but the new-found powers make Annika much more than a victim.

3 young men. 19 countries. 20,000 kilometers. 1 social movement. Juho dreams of a more just world. During an operation in Asia, he has been in contact with the Nepalese Dalit population's poor conditions and have not been able to forget what he saw. Juho wants to find a way to help them.

The history of Finland through traces of the past.

Where light breaks into shards is a poetic short film about an encounter between a human and a bladderwrack on the shores of the Baltic Sea. The theme is intepreted through the memories of the sea and it invites the viewer to contemplate ones own relationship towards other species.

Erkki Kurenniemi was arguably one of the first artists to propose or fantasise about a complete cultural surrender to cyber existence, and his entire career, covering such diverse fields as artificial intelligence, music, engineering, film, dance or rhetorics, testifies to this desire to escape the limits of the human body and transgress into a different dimension, bordering on techno-fetishism. In his 1964 short Electronics in the World of Tomorrow, Kurenniemi presents a slideshow of the most aseptic signs of technological imagination: diagrams, chips, machines, cold surfaces. But footage of human warmth also comes up - mostly in black and white, as if to give humans the status of a memory. Originally silent, the film was in this version endowed with a electronic music piece by Kurenneimi himself: a cold, aggressive soundtrack that could be said to present technology as a potentially menacing affair, although this is a reading that the director would certainly refute.

An ethnographic film depicting the harvest and threshing of grain in Veteli.

Hair is an extension of the nervous system. It can rightly be seen as external nerves, sort of well-developed sense horns or antennae, which transmit a huge amount of important information to the brain stem, limbic system and neocortex.

A hospital room drama in which women talk about love, children, relationships with men, and life in general. Stories of survival are seasoned with both tears and laughter.

A man dressed up as Santa Claus is about to find out who's been naughty.

Aerial photograph salesman travels the Finnish countryside. In one house he hears strange noises coming from the closet.

A Finnish drama about the short term of Finland's first female prime minister, Anneli Jäätteenmäki.

Two chicken is born in the second material. It will continue efforts to find a picturesque expression, which is free to form as described in the film. Business and shape, the execution is so picturesque and cinematic, as the limit is lost. Painted film color effect to increase many times the film projector spotlight

A roughly beautiful Hilton! gives the viewer a glimpse of life in a modern society, a life that young persons lead.

For a hundred years, the Association of Finnish Student Unions (SYL) has acted as the mouthpiece for Finnish university students. SYL opened its doors to the world and was a pioneer in both student health care and housing production. At the same time, there have been marches both for developing countries and against the Soviet Union.

A video work that engages with seeing, reality, and utopias. It asks what is true and what may be constructed by our perception

Room for a Break explores changes in our working life through everyday spaces. The film depicts breaks in a think tank, construction site container, museum, and midwife break room, among others. A break expands into a question of space and time: who can take a break in today’s work life, in what kind of settings are breaks taken, and who decides on breaks?

A story of the lives of Aino and Oskar Kallas.

The history of money in Finland with a "candid camera" segment of people reacting to a banknote glued to the street.

Susan Salter is living her dream. She moves to Finland and starts a new life as an artist. But she doesn't know that some one is watching her from the dark. Everybody is not as lucky as she is. And she is about to learn it the hard way.

Erkki leaves the army and sets out to find himself. In the countryside, he finds new love and the courage to stand up to his strict father.

Both diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, politicians Esko Seppänen and Iiro Viinanen forge a deep friendship despite their ideological differences.

André Wickström performed his first stand-up gig in 1995. Familiar from television, André also makes audiences laugh in clubs and theaters in both Finnish and Swedish. His intelligent and sarcastic humor makes us Finns laugh at ourselves by examining everyday phenomena from a slightly different perspective.

Trollforest is in grave danger, so Rölli the Troll must unite with a Forest Fairy to save their home.

An educational film about the creation and development of the elderly care and national pension system, as well as a report on the operations of the National Pension Service.

An experimental documentary about the loss of the communal smoking area. Little by little these areas disappear from the landscape as societies strive to become smoke-free. These liminal, in-between spaces are often also personal spaces in public areas. They are places of pause, modified for oneself or the community. This work contemplates themes of cultural norms, specialised places, social meanings and the territorial behavior of human beings. How a public place is turned into a personal space by its daily users and what happens when we lose these spots. A smoking spot is more than just a place to smoke.

A nurse, tired of her job, does not notice that a doctor leaves for his break. This gives a patient from the psychiatric unit next door a chance to sneak into the empty office. When it is time to call in the next patient, the patient now disguised as a doctor, realises she is in a tough spot but decides to meet with the patient anyway.

A film built around Robin Packalen, 13-year-old Finnish pop singer.

Jack Shaker is a professional earthquake hunter. He has always enjoyed traveling around the world killing earthquakes. Sadly, tragic accident renders Jack unable to hunt earthquakes and he moves to a peaceful little town in Finland, far away from seismic activities. Everything seems to be great at first but when people dead to Jack start to die around him, he's soon to realize that a big nasty earthquake is after him... AND THIS TIME IT'S PERSONAL! The Revenge of the Earthquake is a world spanning epic action thriller from Trash Video and Insane Bastards. Filled with dramatic moments, bloody action and explosive special effects.

A political satire about a decision yet to be made and heard – and in all the hassle, the Prime Minister has gone missing.

Ossi desperately wants to be accepted by the office ski fanatics to be seen as one of the guys. He grabs his skis and hits the trail. “No perkele” is a comedy short about expectations of being a man in Finland.

A story of Delphine, a girl who committed suicide.

In a forest, three elderly sisters are playing hide-and-seek. As the play goes on, time starts to lose its linearity, and past selves merge with present ones. What follows is an odyssey through dreams and memories, a hallucinatory exploration of time and collective imagination.

How I learned to fly?

The traditional salmon weir of the River Sámi of Deatnu represents the symbiotic architecture of humans and ecosystems that also bears deeply on the international politics, global interests and changes of dynamics. As an architect, the director is also interested in the archetypal form of the weirs that also has things in common with other places and indigenous nations worldwide.

The film depicts Finland's actions in the Winter War and Continuation War using a compilation of material collected from narrators, map images, and TK photographers.

In a hospice, every day is somebody's last day alive. The sheets are changed, and someone elsebrought in to die. Before the end, hands are held, and there is time for coffee. And for some of us, all this dying is just the usual everyday life.