Tuuli Kuittinen

Mother of Snow Cranes

Over 90 years old Ellen Vuosalo has lived many lives. First as a Finnish immigrant in Canada, then as a zoology student in California and finally as a mother of snow cranes in Iran. Iiris Härmä's Mother of Snow Cranes tells the story of an incredible woman's extraordinary life, from love to tragedy to revolution. It is a story about nature, humanity, and the role of women in both the West and Iranian culture. Or as Ellen herself says " What a life! What a world!"

Miki Liukkonen – Mitä et minusta vielä tiennyt

A touching documentary about a literary star who died at the age of 33, leaving a permanent mark in Finnish literature, and people close to him.

Miki Liukkonen – Mitä et minusta vielä tiennyt

A touching documentary about a literary star who died at the age of 33, leaving a permanent mark in Finnish literature, and people close to him.

Cantores Minores – Näin unta että lauloin

A nuanced documentary that follows a year in the life of legendary Helsinki all-boys choir Cantores Minores, from rehearsals to performances and behind the scenes.

Cantores Minores – Näin unta että lauloin

A nuanced documentary that follows a year in the life of legendary Helsinki all-boys choir Cantores Minores, from rehearsals to performances and behind the scenes.

Siblings

Thirty-year-old twins Jenna and Joni find out that their father has a third child. Sister Jóna lives in Iceland. The siblings' meeting will change everyone's world, relationships and future. As each searches for meaning in their own lives, surging between one father, two homelands and three adult siblings, from reunification to separation and back again. Over the years, the siblings encounter themselves and each other, their similarities and differences.

Lynx Man

A Finnish equivalent of Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man, Hannu has a love and connection to nature that surpasses most. It is the rare lynx in particular that has bitten into Hannu’s heart – so much so that he actually claims to be able to speak its language. So when a dead lynx turns up in his forest, he dons an animal mask, crawls down on all fours and sniffs out the mystery through the mire and thicket. With hauntingly beautiful footage captured by hidden cameras throughout the forest, ‘Lynx Man’ paints a colourful and vivid twilight picture of the natural world around us – and of man’s impact on it. For no matter what Hannu does to live in harmony with the animals, he cannot hide from belonging himself to the species that is the lynx’s worst enemy. It makes sense that most of Juha Suonpää’s atmospheric film takes place in the twilight between dream and reality. Here, the vast forests come alive in Hannu’s hypnotic Night Vision footage of the nocturnal life of the lynx.

Sorrow Tamers

Sorrow Tamers is a documentary about people who have chosen to face sorrow without avoiding it or running away from it. The film is about love, change, sorrow and abandonment.

Hospital - Daughter's Mother

Winter 1975 - author Jeanette Aspen arrives at Lapinlahti Mental Hospital to meet her only child, psychiatrist Karin Aspen, 36 years after sending her daughter to Sweden as herself traveled to Southern Europe, at the start of the Winter War. The encounter triggers a drama between the mother and daughter, who are now total strangers to each other.

Donner - Private

Jörn Donner’s entire production can be considered as a self-portrait, a life-spanning performance. Whilst others have painted one image or another of Donner, John Webster’s interpretation differs in that it pulls most of its material from Donner’s last-intended interview in December 2019, and an immense never-before-seen collection of photographs from albums simply labelled “Donner – Privat”. As a result, the film morphs into an epilogue of sorts, of Donner’s life story.

Eye to Eye

For the family members of murder victims mourning is often postponed indefinitely. To unlock the trauma and begin the grieving, a method called restorative dialogue brings two parents - and the audience - eye to eye with the murderers.

Master Cheng

Cheng, 45, a restaurant owner from China, has travelled with his young son halfway around the world to a remote village in Finland. His wife died recently in an accident, and Cheng wanted to have a break from everything by traveling with his son to see an old Finnish friend who lives on a farm in the countryside of Finland. It’s the most remote place Cheng can imagine with endless forests, thousands of lakes, a country with entire population of one-fifth of Cheng’s home town, Shanghai.

Ryhmäteatteri

Documentary on the history of Ryhmäteatteri theatre company.

Ryhmäteatteri

Documentary on the history of Ryhmäteatteri theatre company.

Love and Fury

In 1980's Helsinki, a city about to burst with young energy and rebellion, two young writers determined to conquer the world fall madly in love. For Inka, the love affair puts everything in motion: she finds her own voice, publishes her first novel - and becomes a sensation. The intensity of their relationship has a different affect on Juhana, who starts to lose his grip on writing and, finally, life. At the height of the love affair Inka starts to suspect that their mad love might actually be real madness.

Seamstress

A documentary film about Martta Koskinen, the last executed woman in Finland during the war in 1943. Martta was a Seamstress who lived in Helsinki during the Second World War. She was one of the post-civil war (in 1918) generation for whom the war had meant a disappointment in the system and failure in unity of the Finnish nation. The legacy of the civil war had left systems of persecution in place for those with socialist ideals. Martta and her fellow revolutionaries were determined to continue the resistance movement although they knew that at worst it could cost their lives. Martta was imprisoned twice before she was shot. She was an idealist, whose seemingly harmless, naive beliefs in peace and justice were the most dangerous traits a person could have at the time.

Eila, Rampe and Baby Girl

Baby Girl, 30, a poet with a bachelor's degree in arts, is anguished because of her relationship with Pirkka, a relatively smart, young man. Baby Girl's parents, Eila and Rampe, do their best to become friends with Pirkka and his elegant mother. Through coincidence and error Eila occupies her summerhouse neighbors' empty luxury villa. When Pirkka's mother drops by, Eila lies that she and Rampe own the fancy house. The showing off and lying escalate when Eila's mother and sister show up. The real owners of the house, an upper-class couple, Thomas and Monica, are driven away to Eila and Rampe's modest cottage.

Himmlerin kanteleensoittaja

"Himmlers Kantele Player" - about Finnish student, who decides to leave University of Sorbonne and walk from Paris to Helsinki in the spring of 1935. On his way, in Germany, he meets Heinrich Himmler, who is attracted by a traditional Finnish instrument, kantele. Himmler employs Yrjö as researcher to the Ahnenerbe institute to find the Aryan roots from the runic singing culture of Finnish Carelia.

A Patriotic Man

Every nation gets the heroes it deserves. A man with a special blood type is used as a device for human doping athletes skiing national team.

Ricky Rapper and Cool Wendy

Ricky Rapper and Nelly Noodlehead leave for the island, where Fanny Rapper works as the resort hostess. At the same time, Uolevi Horsmaniemi arrives with his daughter Wendy, who is little older than Ricky and Nelly. Wendy's arrival confuses the relationship between Ricky and Nelly, as Nelly begins to spend more and more time with Wendy.

The Storage

Antero Rousku is a storeman in a paint store. His job requires raw muscle power, mixing paints and carrying house repair materials around to earn his daily bread. But the basic salary is not enough for Rousku. He also sells a lot of stuff on the side from the storeroom directly to Jylhäkorpi, a frequent visitor, bypassing company bookkeeping. Rousku's colleague in the cellar storeroom is Raninen whose life consists of work, quarreling with his wife, and lottery. Raninen wants to win the main prize but he wants to have the right numbers in exactly the order in which they appear from the lottery machine. Raninen is not the sharpest pencil in the pencil box. Rousku's freedom is threatened by his relationship to the saleswoman Karita. Rousku wants to keep a distance to the woman except in bed. Karita has decided otherwise.

Frozen Hell

During the Continuation War, there were dozens of POW camps in Finland. About the third of 70,000 prisoners died during the first year of war. Most of the archives of the camps were destroyed and the majority of the war crimes were never revealed.

The Unknown Woman

The Unknown Woman is a documentary film scripted and directed by Elina Kivihalme. It depicts the reality of Finnish agriculture and forestry during the war years, when the home front relied entirely upon the work and endurance of the women. All farm work, caring for the children, woodcutting and other forestry operations were undertaken by the civilians, as the men in their prime were on the front.

Princess

Princess tells the true story of former cabaret dancer Anna Lappalainen's redemptive struggle with insanity, who checked in to Finland's Kellokoski Psychiatric Hospital in 1945.

Ricky Rapper and the Bicycle Thief

Summer vacation has just begun. In honor of it, Serena Rapper and Lennart Lindberg decide to go on holiday. Ricky gets a new bicycle as a consolation, but it disappears mysteriously. Ricky and Nelly Noodlehead go looking for it which turns into a thrilling adventure.

Ricky Rapper

Ricky Rapper is a ten year old boy who lives with his aunt Serena and likes to play drums and rap. His aunt breaks her leg, leading to cousin Fanny moving in to take care of the household. Fanny is very strict and that means no more drums for Ricky. With the help of his downstair neighbor Nelly, Ricky seeks to restore the normal order to the apartment.

A Shout into the Wind

The fate of a culture lies on the shoulders of few determined individuals.

Family Meeting

Revolves around the 20-year celebration of the Wentus Blues Band and their jubilee concert at the Aleksanteri Theater in Helsinki.

Once Upon A Time There Was A Utopia

The grand old man of Finnish documentary film, Lasse Naukkarinen, recollects his films, diary entries and experiences and walks us through the turbulent years of the 60's and the 70's.

Love Is a Treasure

Love Is a Treasure is a 55-minute film about the world of women who have developed psychoses. It consists of five episodes each telling the story of one woman. The episodes are based research and interviews but the stories and dialogue are fiction, combinations of different elements. —The Cinematic Works of Eija-Liisa Ahtila

Miinavaara!

The sculptor and protector of finncattle Miina Äkkijyrkkä is a person who provokes strong passions. Miina is an exceptional woman who has done both exceptionally courageous and exceptionally strange deeds. She is passionately hated - but also admired and loved. At the Skatta farm in Helsinki, Äkkijyrkkä breeds finncattle and fights for the existence of the farm. In addition to conflicts over livestock, Miina’s disagreements with animal welfare authorities and police are escalating. Miina is arrested and her dogs are taken into custody. Miina faces charges about opposing the police and a trial is ahead. At the same time as Miina is struggling with the authorities, she is building a sculpture of a Holy Cow from car wrecks, which she is erecting in Helsinki's Ruoholahti.

Young Love

Jukka, 13, is coached in photography by his openly gay art teacher. With his dead father's old camera, Jukka sees Johanna, a beautiful girl in her early twenties being physically abused by her stepfather. With the help of the local fire department, Jukka comes to her rescue. He quickly befriends the girl who works in a nearby supermarket, claims to become her manager and enters her in a beauty contest.

Mole's Treasure

A small mole is looking for a fallen star in the night forest where everyone else seem to have already found their own treasures.

Between the Fist and the Stove

Between the Fist and the Stove is a hilarious, fictional film, a melodrama and a tragicomedy based on clips from old Finnish films from the 1940s and 1950s. It is a synthesis of Finland’s Bold and the Beautiful – of a time when the swing of the haystack band made the public wild. Passion, jealousy, lust and forgiveness meet in the surges of the rapids and at the gates of heaven.

Lunastus

In a small village in Eastern Finland in 1918, Patrick, who has taken care of the chaplain, teacher and physician, has been filled with loneliness and brutal spirit of work for five years.

Hunger

War and famine drive the inhabitants of the snowy forest into desperate and macabre deeds.

Uppo-Nalle

Little girl finds a teddy bear from the seashore. Reeta and Teddy Uppo form a deep friendship with each other, but what happens when Uppo meets an old hermit?