Mervi Junkkonen

A grieving heart surgeon struggling with the loss of his wife drifts through an emotionally detached life while raising his teenage daughter. His chance encounter with a dominatrix awakens feelings he thought were gone, drawing him into a dark and unconventional world where pain and desire intertwine.

Brothers Alex and Robin live in miserable conditions with their violent and severely alcoholic father. In an effort to make life bearable, Alex tries to keep his father in a good mood while taking on a parental role for his younger brother, who is aggressive and unruly. When Alex falls for Ines and travels with her to Berlin, the brothers begin to drift apart, and disaster soon becomes inevitable.

In a conservative and religious small town in Northern Finland during the late 1970s, the arrival of the sexual revolution disrupts the balance of two architect families. The plot follows two 13-year-old boys, singers in the traditional Star Boys Christmas procession (Tiernapojat), who closely witness their parents' sexual liberation and the resulting marital tensions. Confronted with the adults' behavior and the breakdown of their family structures, the teenagers face upheavals that impact their own transition into adulthood.

Marjaleena, a 60-year-old drunk ex-beauty pageant, runs a low end bar in Spain’s Costa del Sol. She discovers that her criminal husband Worm is about to get out of jail and is planning a dream life with his new cell-mate lover. Together with an uncanny crew Marjaleena sets off to get her share of her husbands millions.

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

A young boy lives with his mother on a farm surrounded by deep forest in the remote wilds of the Finnish countryside. From time to time, the boy visits his father - a man of great violence - in prison. Locked in the stable is an unruly horse, the boy´s only other companion. Their simple life is disrupted when a stranger appears, with a note from the father and a bullet in his side. Reluctantly, mother and son offer the stranger refuge.

Ivan, a Bulgarian taxi driver living at the Golden Sands tourist resort, is saving money in order to go back to Finland to meet his ex-wife and son, and to make amends for his past mistakes. But money is tight, and eventually Ivan will resort to extreme measures.

At the beginning of time, giants created the mountains and deep forests that surround the small town of Ydre. It’s now one of Sweden’s smallest municipality, and has a population of just a few thousand, which is carefully looked after by the friendly and idealistic mayor. He is ready with gifts and big smiles every time a child is born and he can note that Ydre has a new inhabitant. In the meantime, youths and elderly people are working and living their lives. It’s a cinematic film about responsibility, love for the community and sense of belonging told with an anchored humor about ordinary enlightened moments of everyday on-going life. Creation myths, fables and everyday realism are mixed with understated comedy in an atmospheric and moving film.

Midsummer in Sweden; somewhere above the Arctic Circle. Many curious stories unfold in a small Finnish-speaking village, while the sun never sets.

A letter, received by the Finnish National Radio’s phone-in program, hopes that in this era of #metoo and many other well-meaning campaigns, attention will be drawn to an unpleasant phenomenon, the use of the name Urpo as a synonym for idiot. In this warm-hearted and humorous documentary, four men called Urpo gather to reflect on the meaning and impact of their name on their lives. Is the use of Urpo still decent in 2023?

Kebi, Serge, Musa, and Hector come from different parts of the world, but they have one thing in common: they have all been tortured in their home countries. Contrary to their expectations, they survived the torture and they now all live in Finland. Life goes on, but with certain limitations. The torture has had a severe impact on them.

Aila is looking for a lost cat when she meets Simo, a young man of few words.

Leila is a recently divorced woman. She looks around the empty house and finds it difficult to understand that this is her life. The night before moving out, Leila wakes up to a knocking that seems to come from inside her living room wall. A man inside claims to be a time traveler from the future.