Panu Vauhkonen

A restaurateur befriends a Syrian refugee who has recently arrived in Finland.

Aliide experienced The Great Terror under Stalin’s regime, and decades after her hometown people were deported to Siberia, she lives alone in an isolated house. One night, she finds a young woman in her yard – Zara has just escaped from the claws of the Russian mafia that held her as a sex slave. Survivors both, Aliide and Zara engage in unearthing each other’s motives and gradually their stories merge into one, revealing the tragedy of a family during the cruelest years in Estonian history.

Parikka, the actor once called the Funniest Man in Finland, and his troupe are about to be executed for the atrocities committed during the Civil War in Finland. Jaeger Lieutenant Nyborg, an admirer of Parikka, suspects a definite miscarriage of justice. He wants to save the actors. The forthcoming visit of the German General von der Goltz to the prison island provides him with a suitable opportunity. Nyborg suggests that the actors prepare a comical performance for the visitor and not be shot. Instead, they will be given a new trial. Preparing a comedy in the horrible circumstances, in the midst of hunger and death, seems quite an overwhelming task. Only a handful of real actors are still alive, the rest of the troupe consists of stagehands. Parikka has to use all his inventive skills to be able to produce something funny.

Julia is a young lawyer who has been in conflict with her father for a long time. Her mother seems a bit insane, and Julia thinks that he is partially responsible for this. She has also split with the father of her son and tries to escape all these concerns by working hard. On a new case, she is brought back to the house near the lake where she was raised to help a group of environmentalists to protect its natural beauty against the industrial project of a power company. But by doing so she has to fight the greed of the locals, and their trust in an evil spirit that is believed to be attached to the lake.

In the heat of the night, a man from faraway plays the piano. In the local hillside prison, a bitter double-crossed convict stares at the city life over the roofs. A revenge is brewing in his mind; the blood-thirsty killer prepares his escape. Vares gets a client who needs private investigations. Despite the beautiful wife, Vares smells a rat... In the middle of the summer night, a shot rings out. One life comes to an end and Vares finds changes in his assignment. The clues lead him to first-hand encounters and second-hand bookshops; a visit to the gym reveals a drug-smuggling route from Stockholm... Vares finds himself entangled in hot money and cool silk. In the background slithers a cunning garter snake.

Stuck in the suburbs of Helsinki, 20-year-old Markus plans on moving to New York, his sights set on pursuing streetball fame. With little money behind him, he turns to the local loan shark - and when he discovers that Markus has no plans to repay him, things take a turn for the worse.

Lasse is an old racist who has lives in an apartment block filled with a selection of refugees and immigrants. Kamal is a 16-year old boy who's fed up in his life in Finland, and dreams of moving to Nairobi to live with his father. Only problem is that he doesn't have the money to buy the ticket.

Arriving in Helsinki, a nameless man is beaten within an inch of his life by thugs, miraculously recovering only to find that he has completely lost his memory. Back on the streets, he attempts to begin again from zero, befriending a moody dog and becoming besotted with a Salvation Army volunteer.

Outcast by his co-workers and living alone, Koistinen is a security guard who works the night shift in a luxury shopping mall in Helsinki. But when icy blonde Mirja approaches him, the lonely Koistinen falls helplessly for her, unaware she is manipulating him for her criminal boyfriend.

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In a religious rural community in the 1950s, Ritva, a young woman has kept her pregnancy a secret. Helped by her sister, she gives birth but soon abandons the baby. The next day the infant is brought to the hospital where Ritva works. Troubled with shame, Ritva finds consolation from a dying priest.