Synopsis

A multi-layered love story, this lyrical portrait follows 22-year-old Finnish climate activist Ida and her friends, all passionately devoted to preserving the forest. While they relish swimming in the crystalline lakes and embracing the ancient trees of their native woods, they are also unafraid to infiltrate corporate offices, shut down paper factories, and put their bodies in front of bulldozers. On their journey, they also find each other.

With stunning cinematography of Finland’s beautiful landscapes — think vast coniferous woods and magical snow forests — and an empathetic look at her young protagonists, director Virpi Suutari (Entrepreneur, ChicagoIFF 2019) steeps the viewer in the idealistic perspective of her subjects. And it’s impossible not to get swept up in their fervent mission. Immersive, engaging, and inspiring, Once Upon a Time in a Forest is a bittersweet ode to youthful dreams and our natural world, more under threat than ever before.

Synopsis

Set in the lush days of a Finnish summer, Mika Kaurismaki’s Long Good Thursday is a gentle comedy of growing older and of accepting the never-ending possibility of finding joy. Finnish comedy star Heikki Kinnunen plays an aging farmer intent on finishing his life in the home he shared with his late wife. Much to his surprise, he finds himself smitten with a free-spirited artist (the ever alluring Jaana Saarinen) intent on using him as a model for her photography. Similar in tone to Hannes Holm’s A Man Called Ove, Long Good Thursday perfectly balances deadpan humor with simple yet profound observations about our shared journey of aging.

Synopsis

In this touching deadpan comedy, a welder, who finds himself in Helsinki and experiencing total amnesia, sets out to rebuild his life with a ragtag group of outsiders.

Synopsis

In an absurd concatenation of events, single mother Niina (Oona Airola) begins working as an archivist at a local paper. She is drawn inexorably into an investigation when a Soviet nuclear missile crashes near her Lapland town. International reporters and handsome strangers descend on the area, and Niina strikes up a relationship with Kai, a fighter pilot who knows a thing or two about the missile.

When her mother says that Finland is a country troubled by a sense of inferiority and unworthiness, Niina knows the feeling. Mistreated by her ex-husband, judged by her family, and dismissed by all with whom she comes in contact, this single mother has never learned to set boundaries. And Miia Tervo’s The Missile knows something about boundaries — specifically, how to shatter them. Based on an actual incident in 1984, The Missile constantly blurs the generic lines between political thriller, newspaper drama, domestic melodrama, and romantic comedy. Confidently walking this tightrope, writer/director Tervo delivers a moving essay on the importance of  self-worth and the extraordinary power of simply saying “no.”