Aleksi Bardy

The Tough Ones tells a story of two friends who have a hard time finding their place in the society. Antti and Jussi are released from jail. While they were doing time for bank robbery, the third man involved in the robbery, the one who was not convicted, has become a policeman. He tries to help his friends to settle into the small town in Pohjanmaa, but the boys start a black market liquor business instead. The road seems to lead back to the jail.

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.

Follows the (successful) presidential campaign of Sauli Niinistö from inside of the campaign office.

Amanda Aaltonen refuses to resign herself to the miserable fate of a poor woman and daringly seeks her happiness in the world. As punishment for breaking the rules, society deprives her of the most important thing of all, her freedom, and imprisons her on the island of Seili.

Max is a 25-year-old freelance writer and aspiring novelist who seems well on his way to success in London’s cultural spheres. Yet by night, he finds a different kind of exhilaration as a sex worker with the pseudonym Sebastian, meeting men via an escorting platform. Max uses his experiences as Sebastian to fuel his stories and the worthy debut novel that he has been longing to write, finally seems within reach.

Rouva Presidentti is a documentary on Tarja Halonen, the 11th President of Finland. The movie follows Halonen for one and a half years, during her last times as President.

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

Over a year, we follow the former Swedish Minister of Defense, Anders Björck, in his work as governor of Uppsala County. The official position is almost 400 years old, and the job consists of sitting at a big desk, having lunch meetings with other governors, cutting ribbons at opening ceremonies, holding speeches and eating dinner with the King and Queen of Sweden. It is hard work, but someone has to do it. Björck gives the viewer full access, making this personal portrait both humorous and very, very serious.

Inkeri, 75, has hit her husband on the head with a solid iron frying pan and is planning to bury him in their garden. Before facing the rest of her life in prison, there may yet be a moment left to really live. Inkeri makes her sisters Sylvi and Raili join her on a trip to the Koli National Park. Will Inkeri find in her that free young woman who desired a feminist revolution in the 70s?

The story of the relationship between Sophia, an eight-year-old girl who is growing up fast, and her grandmother, who is nearing the end of her life. They are spending time together with Sophia’s father, at the family summer house on a tiny unspoiled island in the Gulf of Finland. All three are coming to terms with the recent death of Sophia’s mother in very different ways.

Helsinki, 1945. The end of the war brings a new sense of artistic and social freedom for painter Tove Jansson. While focusing her artistic dreams on painting, the enchanting tales of the ‘Moomin’ creatures she told to scared children in bomb shelters, rapidly take on a life of their own, bringing international fame.

Based on powerful archival material documenting the most daring moments in the struggle for liberation in the Third World, this documentary is accompanied by classic text from The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon.

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 the homosexual and men around him even being pressured to marry women and have children. Touko finds refuge in his liberating art, specialising in homoerotic drawings of muscular men, free of inhibitions. His work – made famous by his signature ‘Tom of Finland’ – became the emblem of a generation of men and fanned the flames of a gay revolution.

Two shoeshiner homeless brothers named Zana and Dana live on the edge of survival. They catch a glimpse of Superman through a hole in the wall at the local cinema and decide that they want to go to America in order to meet Superman.

When a schoolteacher is sacked, he projects his bad mood at his troubled teenage son. The son, in turn, buys a CD player from a pawnshop with counterfeit money. This starts a chain reaction of misery as every victim projects his problems on to another person.

Marja (Minka Kuustonen) is a blogger. Olavi is one of the richest men in the country. She might be able to save her blog if she dates him, but what if she falls for him for real?

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 digital TV box that Inari had given money for. Inari gives an ultimatum: a digital box needs to arrive by dawn or she leaves. Janne sets out into the night with his two friends to find a box. On their way to the city of Rovaniemi, Janne and his friends face many challenges, obstacles and temptations. They learn that they need to be daring. There's no room to give into bitterness. The most important thing isn't success, but rather the journey in itself.

After surviving a deadly attack, a guard on the Soviet-Chinese border decides to become a monk but must continually prove along the way that he's capable of becoming the enlightened man he set out to be.

The young man must set up a clear border between Finland and Russia, white and red, enemy and friend, us and them. While the task seems clear he finds out the execution of his command in concrete situations is very difficult. Right choices turn out to be wrong ones and correcting them make things worse.

Pepe Willberg has travelled a winding road to this day, to the hearts of Finns and unlikely stardom. What has it all been like for a man who, in the beginning, sang only on condition that the lights in the hall were turned off? Written and directed by Severi Koivusalo, PEPE is a musical documentary about a talented musician with a unique voice, who struggles to balance his popularity with his passion for music, whose iconic songs have been playing in the background of Finnish life through seven different decades.

While at the reception, Inkeri overhears the doctor telling the nurse behind the corner that there is no life expectancy or hope left. Inkeri's daughter Maija takes it upon herself to care for her mother, even if it means forcing her, but Inkeri has other plans. As her last act, she intends to save Maija from repeating her own mistakes and then throw herself into the Arctic Ocean. Inkeri escapes from the nursing home for her final journey with her steel-haired friends and Matti, who has tagged along. Before reaching the Arctic Ocean, Inkeri throws herself into life: painful memories, intense emotions, and forest rave.

A young and ambitious civil servant Jussi finds himself being in charge of the environmental permit of a huge nickel and uranium mine in Northern Finland. The Talvivaara mine, led by a charismatic globe trotting visioner Pekka Perä is introducing an entirely new method of collecting minerals whilst creating jobs in one of the poorest areas in Scandinavia. Jussi slowly discovers that he has been led astray by several people and that the new method has serious downsides he did not forsee. The mine is causing environmental hazards that are being hushed down. A new application for another permit is brough to his table by the same mine. Along with the application comes an interesting job offer and a chance of a new beginning. Jussi has to decide whether he will play along and if so, with whom.

Ari, a paramedic, is a chronic womanizer; he makes it a point of pride to never sleep with the same woman twice, and his nights are a long series of brazen one-night stands. But when Ari meets Tiina, something unexpected happens – he falls in love.

A 16 year old girl claims she was abducted. Two police officer are tasked with investigating whether her story is plausible.

Finnish art fraud investigator, Emma, goes undercover to infiltrate an auction house in Stockholm to investigate the firm’s connection to a notorious money launderer known as Blanko. To go undetected, Emma chooses the cover identity Annika, a hot-headed socialite who lives for wild parties, drugs and alcohol and is the opposite of the cool, calm, and collected Emma. By adopting this wild persona, doors begin to open to the hidden world of high-class art fraud. However, becoming Annika means Emma must confront memories from her past that she has tried to forget.

In Northern Sweden, 1852, a new pastor and his family arrive in Kengis, a village riddled with disorder.

An icebreaker is stranded in a winter storm during the longest, darkest Solstice night. Coast Guard Sanna Tanner leads the rescue team, haunted by disturbing events. Sanna races to solve the mystery before she becomes the next target.

An architect about to begin her maternity leave starts to suspect that her replacement is trying to take over her grand design, and her life.

Tapsa Mäkilä quits his job as a private detective and starts running a dilapidated inn with his spouse Anna.