Movies: Sami Mäntymaa

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 ...

It is 1595. Brutal wars have just ended in an uneasy peace between Protestant Sweden and Orthodox Russia. We focus on the spiritual defeats of two conquered Finnish brothers, one a hardened near-psychopathic war hero, the other a gentle scientist in ...

Lapland Odyssey is a comedy about Janne, a man from Lapland in northern Finland, a man who has made a career out of living on welfare. Inari, his girlfriend, is tired of Janne's incapability of getting a grip on life, Janne wasn't even able to buy a ...

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 s...

In the mid-1960s, three small-time Finnish bootleggers seize control of their Helsinki neighborhood's black-market liquor business....

A stubbornly traditional eighty-year-old farmer - whose social attitudes verge on the prehistoric - raises hell when he is forced to move in with his sadsack, city-dwelling son and domineering daughter-in-law....

The tough Detective Vares, get hired by a friend accused of murdering a girl. His job is to find the real killer, but people aren't talking. Before he can get traction another homicide takes place- and things move toward a dire conclusion....

Four Olympic gold medals, seven World Championship titles, four World Cup tour championships, and forty six World Cup circuit victories. Once his career as a professional athlete ended however, the other side of his personality emerged into public vi...

It’s been three years since we last met Janne and Inari. Since then, they’ve had a daughter named Lumi. Janne and his friends experience a new adventure, this time on an autumn night. The boys go to a party but end up chasing Lumi who has disappeared...

A 14-year-old boy in a stifling Helsinki slum takes some unwise life lessons from his soon-to-be-incarcerated older brother....

A father who was absent for 30 years of his son's life returns and wants to set on a journey through Finland, so they can learn to know each other again....

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

A sort of "Divorce Finnish Style," Mika Kaurismäki's rambunctious comedy, The House of Branching Love , recounts the breakup of a thirty-something professional couple - Juhani, a family therapist, and his wife, Tuula, a successful business trainer....

Haunted by his traumatic past and cautious about the prospects of an uncertain future, a fourteen year old boy named Juhani winds up in an isolated boys' home known as The Island. Juhani has been shuttled between foster homes and temporary families f...

Four stories about Finnish life intersect. In the first one, drum artist Monkki Mähönen arrives for a renovation job at his old band mate's summer villa. Second story revolves around wannabe motorcycle gang and its leader Jouni who are being humiliat...

Emilia is a teenager and a good girl, who never forgets her homework or her little sister, Elsa. Siiri is just one year older than Emilia but not at all like her. When Emilia and Siiri become friends, Emilia's life changes. Siiri encourages her to ta...

The movie is about the Lokomo laborer, and group of friends that dreams come true and a thirst for fast-paced life that take decades....

Jussi Vares find two bodies of Turku outskirts of women, which has been shot in the head, and the man whose body is full of runes similar to the cuts, which suggest that the murder would have been part of the dark ritual. A year later, Vares is hired...

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 = ...

In the third instalment of the franchise, Janne embarks on an epic hike, a journey of self-discovery. His dreams of a tranquil retreat into nature are quickly shattered however, when Räihänen and Kämäräinen both decide to come along for the trip. Mea...