Discoveries from Finland World Cinema

Smallholder collaboration and courses.

A film about forestry work using old and new methods. Forestry work and the use of wood before and during the war.

The film teaches you how to wash laundry with minimal detergent.

In Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, where women are denied the right to study, work, and speak freely, a group of young women risk their lives to form a secret reading circle.

An ethnographic documentary about crafts made with an axe and a knife. The documentary includes images of carving fence posts, axe handles, wooden nails, and the making of leather shoes.

Portraying the life of a small fishing community on Haapasaari

Documentary about hydrography at the Baltic Sea

Three alternative trailers for Planet of the Apes

Matti Jurva and other performers perform a joke about the Terijoki government.

Tourist bus trip from Helsinki via Tallinn, Riga, Berlin, Prague and Vienna to Budapest and back to Helsinki via Poland. Travel photos from along the route and from Budapest.

Passenger ship M/S Skandia's voyage across the Baltic Sea

A commissioned film about the cruise ship M/S Ilmatar

The short documentary is a layered film that follows Oleksandria, who fled the war in Ukraine, to North Karelia. Oleksandria arrives in Mätäsvaara to plant trees and, at the same time, to witness the village’s history. An old mine is brought back to life, and through it, the connection between history and the present is reflected in both people and places.

A body wakes up in a mysterious room and begins experiencing processes that have always been present but never noticed – until now.

Artist-filmmaker Htoo Lwin Myo examines some of the earliest pre-cinematic objects portraying Myanmar's colonial past: magic lantern slides. A polyphonous essay on the perils of history and the many stories we can find in the remains of times gone.

Kurt Jäger's silent documentary Oy Taide-Filmi Ab's Finnish President Lauri Relander's Visit to Estonia in 1925 (1925) follows the first official foreign trip of Finland's second, newly inaugurated president, Lauri Kristian Relander, to Estonia.

Melisa, a 17 year old romani girl is being bullied. She experiences alienation and frustration at school, but mother Carme supports her with her family history and old letters. The letters and old photographs open up the family’s story and expectations to Melisa: how to be proud of your romani culture while succeeding in a finnish education system. The story combines everyday moments, memories and symbolic scenes, such as family gatherings, bullying situations and conversations, which give light to Melisa’s growth. In the end Melisa understands her own roots, family history and her own worth and finds her place in the world proud as a romani and as finnish.

A short dive into director's teenage years, acne and all. A text he wrote to make up for a promise he broke a long time ago, looking back at memories he'd tucked away in an archive of shame. The person he wanted to be at 14 vs. the bittersweet reality of time gone by.

The main character in this three-act visual gag is an apple, subjected to extremes of lightness and heaviness. Méliès’s camera magic enchants it in such a way that, in the most realistic shot, it ultimately seems the least real.

Eino Ruutsalo’s cinematic last will and testament. It includes discarded footage from his films and kinetic experiments, as well as unexposed stock. The clips were treated by throwing them on the floor and trampling them.

Documentary about the Finnish skier Eero Mäntyranta

In Saara Ekström's video Hypnos, Japanese Noh theatre masks become portals to a spiritual, ritual and psychological state, in dialogue with the forest. Fundamental, existential questions are contained here. Saara Ekström thematically returns to the unconscious both as a mental category and a layer in the fabric of collective history and deep time.

Paula’s House is an animated short that stands as an act of activism, focusing on the experiences of the queer Kenyan community in their struggle for societal acceptance and safety.

When her mother dies, Anna has a choice to make. Seeking answers, she embarks on a journey of self-discovery to Helsinki, where she finally meets others like her.

Short documentary created by two young Finnish men driven by a desire to support Ukraine. In the spring of 2023, they traveled to the country to capture documentary footage and speak with locals.

A documentary film on the Western Lapland Open Dialogue Project, the program presently getting the best results in the developed world for first-break psychosis -- approximately 85% full recovery, a far majority off antipsychotic medication.

Four good friends travel through time and space for an alchemical and sensuous celebration full of phantasms.

An intimate portrait of three young Chinese women raised under one of history's largest demographic experiments—China’s one-child policy.

Camera moves around the city of Turku. We also pay a visit to Naantali and Airistola.

Finland, 1944: An initially enthusiastic recruit who can't wait to fight is confronted with the horrors of war.

The owner of a remote gas station and a small time crook cross paths on one hot summer's day.

Watching, needing, dwelling. Vomit on vomit, legs, moving, moving on movement, hours, days, nylons set on course. No regrets, no permissions. Soundtrack by Bizarre Uproar.

A TV documentary about the Finnish band Hassisen Kone and its frontman Ismo Alanko.

Foster home kids Max (16), Alma (14), Dali (14), Vera (12), Ahmad (12), and Siiri (10) are spending a summer day by the shore. While the group sorts out their internal dynamics and gets a feel for the newcomer Alma, Siiri sets off on her own.

19-year-old Luca Renfield’s dreams of becoming a top-level chess player begin to crumble. Struggling with self-doubt and obsession, he faces a harsh question—does he have what it takes to keep going?

What happens when a badger accidentally breaks the sun?

Suomi-Filmi's 40th anniversary film from December 1959 introduces all aspects of Finland's largest and most diverse film company. The fast-paced documentary showcases the operations of a full-service film studio led by Risto Orko, including Suomi-Filmi's cinema chain. The film, although optimistic about the future, was made as a historic turning point approached: in just a few years the story of big film studios in Finland was over.

The documentary follows the Demolition Art collective as they work on their largest exhibition project to date, as well as an artist couple creating their first joint work, all within a vacant building that transforms into a wonderland of creativity and community.

The freely flowing Spectacular Specimen is a film filled with underwater beauty, where researchers explore the endlessly fascinating world of marine life. Underneath the surface, objective attitudes to research work hide true passionate relationships to ocean life. This passion for the ocean, however, can often get lost in the world of financially motivated research funding and a field that often objectifies wildlife.

The everyday, democratic pleasures of the sauna get their dues in this short film stripped of everything superfluous. There is a tangible warmth recorded on the 16 millimetre film used by director Jari Nordström and cinematographer Kalle Pajamaa, even before the water thrower reaches the sauna benches. As singer Tapio Rautavaara calls on the film’s soundtrack: “More water on the stones!”

A short made in Kino Euphoria International Kino Kabaret 2021.

A short made in Kino Euphoria International Kino Kabaret 2022

Meet the people in the northern village of Muodoslompolo, Tornedalen, Sweden. A small community undergoing major transformations and with deep connections to a dark side of Swedish history.

'Popcorn' is shot with a self-made pinhole camera, which exposes simultaneously 528 frames. An illusion of moving around a frozen subject is created when these still images are animated into a movie. The time slice technique separates movement and time from each other. We see a group of young people throwing popcorn at each other.