Matti Ijäs

Viltteri, a balding guy in his thirties living in rural northern Finland, is hopelessly clueless about his new role as a married man and the father of a newborn son. A perfect escape from family responsibilities is having to get his old Hillman Minx repaired and inspected for road-worthiness, with a little help from an eccentric bunch of friends who never seem to have grown up either.

Vaarala, a reserved romantic photographer, has an odd artistic vision of loneliness: he takes serial photos of an empty park bench in remote spaces of nature. When he meets and falls in love with the spirited, unruly Ansa, his ‘bench’ is suddenly filled. But in order to be with her he has to not only overcome his own frailties, but also the impending danger of Ansa’s volatile ex-con ex, and then Ansa herself, a woman prone to impulsiveness and impetuousness.

Aspiring young comedian Hepi rides a moped and sleeps in cars left at a garage for repair. He joins a group of older but equally bad comedians trying to capture and sell their art on videotape. Hepi charms a girl working in the Zoological Museum with his imitations of bird sounds. Alienated look at the frustrations of show business, as presented by a cast of popular Finnish TV comedians with their absurd dialogue and eccentric inside jokes.

Like it or not, almost anyone who has met a really serious poet finds that they have something about them which sets them apart from other people. It's not just a romantic legend. In wry but basically directionless Finnish movie, Paavo Pentikainen plays one of these ungainly beings, a man whose last published work is decades in the past, who probably hasn't written anything in years, but who still has an uncanny knack for precise observation, "pinning the tail on the donkey" almost every time. In the movie, the poet, accompanied by his young assistant, takes a minor celebrity's swaggering tour of small cultural centers and retirement homes.

A middle-aged woman wants a child and starts to look for a suitable father when she doesn't succeed in the plan with her husband.

Anders flees his drug debts to his former home village. Once there, he must come to terms with his past.

Detective Karisto releases Auno 'Räpsy' Pirilä from prison, who in turn has to calve his childhood friend Börje from criminal activities. Alcoholic Dolly takes Räpsy to live in Kallio, Helsinki, and hopes to move to Paris with her in the spring.