Kaisa Roover

The Gravedigger's Wife

Guled and Nasra are a loving couple, living in the outskirts of Djibouti city with their teenage son, Mahad. However, they are facing difficult times: Nasra urgently needs an expensive surgery to treat a chronic kidney disease. Guled is already working hard as a gravedigger to make ends meet.

Tom of Finland

Touko Laaksonen, a decorated officer, returns home after a harrowing and heroic experience serving his country in World War II, but life in Finland during peacetime proves equally distressing. He finds peace-time Helsinki rampant with persecution of the homosexual and men around him even being pressured to marry women and have children. Touko finds refuge in his liberating art, specialising in homoerotic drawings of muscular men, free of inhibitions. His work – made famous by his signature ‘Tom of Finland’ – became the emblem of a generation of men and fanned the flames of a gay revolution.

They Have Escaped

Two troubled youths break out of their halfway house and make their way to one's home.

Heart of a Lion

Neo-Nazi falls in love with a woman who has a black son and finds himself fighting with conflicting feelings.

Gloriously Wasted

Juha Berg is a 30-year-old hopeless drunk in the Kallio neighborhood of Helsinki. Juha doesn't have the first intention of changing his way of life - just the opposite. He really enjoys sundry sexual relationships, adrenalin-inducing violence and, of course, alcohol for which he gets money even if by collecting bottles. But the hilarity in a drunken haze soon gets a run for its money as the passionate Juha falls in love with his AA group leader. The relationship with Tiina progresses quickly to dating and Juha has to make pivotal decisions. Juha has to begin balancing between maintaining a functional intimate relationship and his old lifestyle. Juha's best friend Kristian does his best to sabotage the relationship, and Juha's shaky decision to stay sober is further hindered by Mikael, an expert on German erotica. But how far can you go before there is only one solution left?

Gloriously Wasted

Juha Berg is a 30-year-old hopeless drunk in the Kallio neighborhood of Helsinki. Juha doesn't have the first intention of changing his way of life - just the opposite. He really enjoys sundry sexual relationships, adrenalin-inducing violence and, of course, alcohol for which he gets money even if by collecting bottles. But the hilarity in a drunken haze soon gets a run for its money as the passionate Juha falls in love with his AA group leader. The relationship with Tiina progresses quickly to dating and Juha has to make pivotal decisions. Juha has to begin balancing between maintaining a functional intimate relationship and his old lifestyle. Juha's best friend Kristian does his best to sabotage the relationship, and Juha's shaky decision to stay sober is further hindered by Mikael, an expert on German erotica. But how far can you go before there is only one solution left?

Hustlers

The director Lauri Nurkse tells that Veijarit is a film about "arjensietokyvyttömyys" (= inability to tolerate everyday life) and about the Peter Pan complex. The main actor Mikko Leppilampi says it's about "kolkyttoistavuotiaat" (= thirtyeenagers = people of thirty behaving like teenagers). An immediate reference point is the commedia all'italiana of the 1950s and the 1960s, the black comedy often exposing the infantile stage of development of the Italian male. Saku and Ässä are anti-heroes, but we never fail to sense the humanity behind their shallow and crazy ways. Veijarit is a satire and a parody of a superficial way of life, but there is a vitality in the protagonists that we feel can lead them to a more meaningful stage of existence after the prolonged youth full of sound and fury. There is a motif of transcendence in the imagery of flying: will the balloons carry me or will they burst.