Ilkka Matila

Production

Ilkka Matila

Born

1963-05-22 (63)

Place of birth

Espoo, Finland

Known for

Production

Credits

20 titles

Known for

Ambush poster
6.0

It is the summer of 1941 and the Finnish army has been mobilized along the border with Russia. A platoon led by Lt. Eero Perkola is waiting for orders to go on the offensive. The platoon receives orders for a recon mission through the wilderness around the Lieksa lake to search for possible Russian defensive positions.

Ambush

1999

Mother of Mine poster
6.8

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.

Mother of Mine

2005

Never Alone poster
6.5

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.

Never Alone

2025

The Eternal Road poster
6.6

Jussi Ketola, returns to Finland from the great depression struck America only to face growing political unrest. One summer night of 1930, nationalist thugs violently abduct Ketola from his home. Beaten and forced to walk the Eternal Road towards a foreign Soviet Russia, where cruelty seems to know no end, his only dream is to return to his family cost it what it may. Hope dies last.

The Eternal Road

2017

The Revolution That Wasn't poster
10.0

With capitalism and corruption becoming more entrenched in Russia, a father and his teenage son gear up for a yearlong political campaign to unseat President Putin in the 2008 elections and shift the country back toward socialism. Aliona Polunina's thoughtful documentary follows Anatoly and Andrei in their struggle to recreate a revolutionary fervor in a society that seems to be embracing the materialist values of the West.

The Revolution That Wasn't

2009

Tango Kabaree poster
8.0

A fictitious biography of Aira Samulin, the goddess of dance and importer of all the international dance crazes to Finland for some fifty years. The life story of this extravagant ever-teen, well beyond the usual retirement age, is told inside a fictitious plot about a Master of Ceremonies trying to persuade Aira to stage a show at his cabaret restaurant. Besides Aira Samulin, many other Finnish celebrities appear among the eccentric lineup auditioning for the show, playing more or less their fictionalised selves.

Tango Kabaree

2001

Film credits

Behind the camera

Ambush poster
6.0

It is the summer of 1941 and the Finnish army has been mobilized along the border with Russia. A platoon led by Lt. Eero Perkola is waiting for orders to go on the offensive. The platoon receives orders for a recon mission through the wilderness around the Lieksa lake to search for possible Russian defensive positions.

Ambush

1999

Mother of Mine poster
6.8

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.

Mother of Mine

2005

Never Alone poster
6.5

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.

Never Alone

2025

The Eternal Road poster
6.6

Jussi Ketola, returns to Finland from the great depression struck America only to face growing political unrest. One summer night of 1930, nationalist thugs violently abduct Ketola from his home. Beaten and forced to walk the Eternal Road towards a foreign Soviet Russia, where cruelty seems to know no end, his only dream is to return to his family cost it what it may. Hope dies last.

The Eternal Road

2017

The Revolution That Wasn't poster
10.0

With capitalism and corruption becoming more entrenched in Russia, a father and his teenage son gear up for a yearlong political campaign to unseat President Putin in the 2008 elections and shift the country back toward socialism. Aliona Polunina's thoughtful documentary follows Anatoly and Andrei in their struggle to recreate a revolutionary fervor in a society that seems to be embracing the materialist values of the West.

The Revolution That Wasn't

2009

Tango Kabaree poster
8.0

A fictitious biography of Aira Samulin, the goddess of dance and importer of all the international dance crazes to Finland for some fifty years. The life story of this extravagant ever-teen, well beyond the usual retirement age, is told inside a fictitious plot about a Master of Ceremonies trying to persuade Aira to stage a show at his cabaret restaurant. Besides Aira Samulin, many other Finnish celebrities appear among the eccentric lineup auditioning for the show, playing more or less their fictionalised selves.

Tango Kabaree

2001

The Year of the Wolf poster
5.8

Sari is a young, beautiful and intelligent girl who is busy studying at university,but she suffers from epilepsy and has to face death on a daily basis. Mikko is hersomewhat older university teacher, who is tired of life, and who one day decides toabandon his wife, children and idea of a perfect life. Both characters have been tooscared to live their lives to the brim for too long. But they meet, and in spite oftheir prejudices and reserved natures, they manage to create a dramatic and movingmodern romance which confronts numerous taboos. While the imagery explores theboundary between life and death in a most poetic way, the odd couple's romance istold with both bite and humour. Society - be it in the shape of angry ex-wives,overprotective parents, conservative aunts or embittered colleagues - is doing whatit can to put a spanner in the works."

The Year of the Wolf

2007

VÄNÄ poster
7.0

A portrait of film actor Kari Väänänen. Väänänen talks openly about his work and himself. Väänänen's colleagues in "Tuntematon Sotilas" and "Lakeuden Kutsu" shed light on the actor's inner life.

VÄNÄ

2000

No artwork available
NR

A young student moves into a decaying apartment building and is given a disturbing assignment by its residents.

Pimeän arkkitehti

—

Raspberry Boat Refugee poster
5.0

Mikko Virtanen feels like a Swedish soul trapped in a Finnish body. Full of disgust for everything Finnish, he sees Sweden as heaven. Upon meeting a suicidal Swedish psychologist Mikael Anderson, he seizes an opportunity for an identity switch. Raspberry Boat Refugee is a comedy about cultural differences in the Nordic countries, their nationalism and, not least, prejudices about our neighbours. It also proves how futile it is to try to escape oneself.

Raspberry Boat Refugee

2014

No artwork available
NR

In 1975, Finnish President Urho Kekkonen became an internationally recognized expert on bridging the East with the West by hosting the “Conference of Security and Cooperation of Europe”. His dreams of retirement and the penwork of his newfound journalist friend Maarit Tyrkkö on his memoirs come to an abrupt halt when the Soviet Union attacks Afghanistan, and Brezhnev and Carter start waving nuclear warheads at each other. With his time running out, Urho has to find his will of iron again, and muster up the strength to venture into the Soviet Union to save humanity from total destruction.

Urho – Between the Hammer and the Sickle

—

Priest of Evil poster
5.1

Detective sergeant Timo Harjunpää of the Helsinki Violent Crime Unit loses his daughter in a tragic way. Despite the support of his closest colleague, Constable Onerva Nykänen, Harjunpää is unable to recover from the loss of his family. He seeks revenge against his daughter's killer, while in his work he investigates strange deaths in the Helsinki metro that turn out to be the work of a serial killer.

Priest of Evil

2010

Body Fat Index of Love poster
4.9

Stigu and Ella have a just-sex relationship. Stigu is secretly in love but settles for what he can get because Ella wants nothing more. Until they find themselves in a same work project: designing an advertisement for the Family Federation on sustainable relationships. It seems like mission impossible since Ella doesn't believe in the whole concept and Stigu knows nothing about it.

Body Fat Index of Love

2012

Lovers & Leavers poster
4.7

This movie is about Iiris Vaara. She turns 30 and meets young director Marko. All dreams come true but does Marko share her dreams?

Lovers & Leavers

2002

Rollo and the Spirit of the Woods poster
6.9

Hairy and rowdy creatures called rolleys sail to a land inhabited by more peace-loving elves. When the rolleys arrive to the elf village, they scare the elves away and settle down in the village. One of the elves, Milli, a brave elf girl, returns to the village to make a peace with the rolleys. The rolleys do not warm to Milli's peace proposal, but she becomes friends with a rolley called Rölli. It becomes their mission to solve the conflict between the elves and the rolleys.

Rollo and the Spirit of the Woods

2001

Rollo and the Spirit of the Woods poster
6.9

Hairy and rowdy creatures called rolleys sail to a land inhabited by more peace-loving elves. When the rolleys arrive to the elf village, they scare the elves away and settle down in the village. One of the elves, Milli, a brave elf girl, returns to the village to make a peace with the rolleys. The rolleys do not warm to Milli's peace proposal, but she becomes friends with a rolley called Rölli. It becomes their mission to solve the conflict between the elves and the rolleys.

Rollo and the Spirit of the Woods

2001

No artwork available
7.0

In an unspecified war-torn European country, two young girls, aged about 8 and 4, struggle to survive, the older girl having to find food and shelter. When a truckload of soldiers, having gang-raped a discarded naked woman, spots them in a house, the girls are forced up into the attic, but there appears to be no escape. Then the older girl tears their clothing, smears red muck over them, and orders the 4-year-old to lie still. This has the desired effect of convincing the men the girls had been raped and murdered, and they leave.

Two Little Girls And A War

1995

Underwater Iceland poster
6.3

Marko Röhr's film crew takes the viewer to Europe's last unexplored area: Iceland's unique underwater world. We explore the geysers of boiling waters and the crystal clear lakes off the coast of Iceland. We dive under the icebergs, into the tears between the continental plates and into the deep caves.

Underwater Iceland

1997

Lakeuden kutsu poster
5.8

Businessman Erkki Hakala returns to Ostrobothnia after years in Florida and buys a metal workshop in Jalasjärvi from the unknown Partanen brothers with his business partner Taisto Matsomppi. Erkki misses his wife Kaisu, who back in the day stayed in Finland, and his child, but will the man be forgiven for years of absence?

Lakeuden kutsu

2000