The Leading Lady

With few options, newly pardoned convict Leila agrees to work as an assistant to a blind pastor. Father Jacob spends his days answering the letters of the needy, which Leila finds pointless. But when the letters stop, the pastor is devastated and Leila finds herself cast in a new role.

Fleeing from the Russian secret police, a young Estonian fencer is forced to return to his homeland, where he becomes a physical education teacher at a local school. The past however catches up and puts him in front of a difficult choice.

1943: Nine-year-old Eero whose father is killed during the war is brought to Sweden to foster parents to his protection like thousands of other Finnish children. Eero feels lost, particularly as his foster mother Signe behaves very unfriendly. She was expecting a little girl and still mourns for her daughter who drowned in the sea.

Olavi, an aged and shabby art dealer, is planning to retire. Accidentally he finds an old painting that he suspects being much more valuable than his colleagues have priced it. He decides to try to prove for the last time for himself, his colleagues and his estranged family that he can make it.

Sweden 1951. A new society is developing, a society where there is no room for the socially and mentally weak...

1942. The State of Finland has formed an alliance with Nazi Germany. An elderly man single-handedly tries to stop a secret attempt by the Finnish State Police to hand over Jewish refugees directly to the Gestapo.

In rural Sweden of the early 1950s, little Elina goes to school again after recovering from tuberculosis, the same illness that has killed her father a few years earlier. Elina's family belongs to Finnish-speaking Finns frowned upon by a staunch schoolmistress who starts hounding Elina for questioning her authority. Elina's mother, sister, and a liberal young male teacher all try to mediate the ensuing battle of wills between Elina and Miss Holm. Elina finds consolation in wandering out on the dangerous marshlands to have imaginary conversations with her dead father. Written by Markku Kuoppamäki

The thorny relationship between a woman and her retired father worsens after he becomes romantically involved with the housekeeper she hires for him.

Nisse’s wife Leila has just died but he feels he’s done enough mourning. Friends and family are overrun by Nisse who just wants the funeral to be over and done with. No fuss and no mourning here! Nisse demands to be left alone. So, there he is, with the only thing remaining – the sorrow. Nisse grows to understand that even a deep loss is no excuse to eliminate everyone and everything.

In the 1930s, middle-aged museum curator Tauno Saarinen yearns for a young beautiful maid and writes a lengthy confession about his feelings which he gives his wife Elisabet to read. Elisabet shows the writings to her husband's sister Naimi, an art critic who tries to reconcile with her ex-husband despite a spiteful mother-in-law. Meanwhile, things gets worse between Tauno and Elisabet when the young maid, seduced by Tauno, becomes pregnant. Based on a novel by Helvi Hämäläinen, first published in 1941 but partly censored until 1995 because allegedly based on true incidents involving well-known people.

A specialist nurse is given responsibility for a baby boy with a serious heart condition in the middle of nurses’ strike. She is left balancing between her own family, the baby boy and her loyalty for nurses’ cause.

Mira and Johnannes, two young teenagers, have to spend Walpurgis Night in the hospital. Without knowing each other from before, they flee together from the pediatric ward to Mira's hiding place at the swimming pool, where they play and discuss their illnesses. They spend the night at the pool edge and, in the morning, are no longer the same.

Malla and her husband are drifting apart. When Malla gets a new daycare child, she understands how lonely she is.