Matti Pellonpää

Kari Uusitalo, a regular visitor to the Tampere Film Festival, delved into the state of Finnish cinema of the mid-1980s, while getting to know the new generation of filmmakers in Anssi Mänttäri's comedic short documentary. Deep in Reppufilmi's cellar, in addition to director Mänttäri, we meet Pirkko Hämäläinen, Markku Toikka, Matti Pellonpää, Paavo Piskonen and Pauli Pentti. The film poses the question: why is a person, an artist, willing to risk everything over and over again?

A political drama set in the fictional country of Illyria between 1943 and 1945, the story is about the assassination of a leading politician. The country, an ally of Nazi Germany, is on the verge of being annexed to the Eastern Bloc. Kaurismäki's TV adaptation of Jean-Paul Sartre's play Les Mains Sales (Dirty Hands) tells the story of Hugo (Matti Pellonpää) who has just been released from prison. Before going to prison, he has worked as a journalist at his party's newspaper. This timid journalist, who uses the pseudonym Raskolnikov, wants to advance in his career and gets his chance when Hoederer (Sulevi Peltola), the leader of the party, has to be eliminated.

Juice Leskinen & Grand Slam live set recorded in 1988.

Documentary about the life of Finnish actor Matti Pellonpää.

A quintet of cabbies in five cities and their remarkable fares on the same eventful night.

Three penniless artists become friends in modern-day Paris: Rodolfo, an Albanian painter with no visa, Marcel, a playwright and magazine editor with no publisher, and Schaunard, a post-modernist composer of execrable noise.

After years of fame and misfortune in Mexico, the members of the Leningrad Cowboys decide to return to their native village. Their former manager Vladimir, who now calls himself Moses lead them on their way home.

Two Finnish men agree to drive an Estonian woman and a Russian woman to a harbor.

One man's quest for revenge in a post-apocalyptic world

Musical tale of a happy man, whose happiness the Fur King tried to buy.

Sutki travels around Finland selling his wife's knitted mittens at market stalls. Business is slow, and Sutki's boisterous lifestyle doesn't help matters. Sutki is an enterprising salesman. In addition to mittens, he even manages to sell lottery tickets for the disabled. However, as his name suggests, Sutki gets himself into all kinds of trouble, both possible and impossible.

No synopsis available yet.

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.

Antti "Zombie" Autiomaa does two things well: play the bass guitar and drink. After several months' sleeping on the streets of Istanbul, he returns to Helsinki where he's called into the army but discharged on mental health grounds after adding turpentine to the officers' soup. Zombie lives bleary-eyed in an apartment off his parents' house where his lonely, unemployed father suffers from heart disease. His girl-friend Marjo has taken up with a hairdresser but comes back to Zombie. His friend Harri hires him as a roadie for his band "Harry and the Mulefukkers" then gives him a chance as a bass player. He has his girl and he has a gig, but can Zombie put the bottle down?

No synopsis available yet.

Documentary filmed on-set during the making of Aki Kaurismaki's "La vie de Boheme"

Bad Trip, a biker who has been freshly inducted into a gang, flees from them after stealing one of their bikes.

The relationship between a priest's wife and the renovator crackles with passion. While the rectory terrace is being restored, there is a triangular drama at the fore: a priest, a priest’s wife and a renovator.

That Kiljunen familys sets out find their two missing family members, who have been sent to Tampere by the Matalamäki boarding school for retraining due to poor school performance.

A sequel to Soinio's film Kuutamosonaatti (Moonlight Sonata) of 1988. A rural family clings to life until the resourceful Sulo uses the salvific powers of sauna, moonshine, and tar to resurrect his injured brother Arvo, their deceased mother, and even buried revolutionaries. When Arvo drifts to Helsinki and falls into illicit moonshining and wild pursuits of a celebrity, Sulo and their revived mother set out to retrieve him from his urban excesses.

A Finnish man goes to the city to find a job after the mine where he worked is closed and his father commits suicide.

The Leningrad Cowboys, a group of Siberian musicians, and their manager, travel to America seeking fame and fortune. As they cross the country, trying to get to a wedding in Mexico, they are followed by the village idiot, who wishes to join the band.

Nikander, a rubbish collector and would-be entrepreneur, finds his plans for success dashed when his business associate dies. One evening, he meets Ilona, a down-on-her-luck cashier, in a local supermarket. Falteringly, a bond begins to develop between them.

A group of men all called Frank—except for one named Pekka—have had enough of life in their working-class neighborhood, so they set off for a better existence in the magical seaside district of Eira. But the way is long, and the group face many hurdles including stray dogs and defunct streetlights.

Former student Rahikainen is pushed to murder when struggling to pay the rent on his apartment. When the murder is being investigated by the police, Rahikainen struggles between trying to hide his guilt and the pressure to confess.

Manne, Harri, and Ville Alfa are rootless twenty-somethings in search of purpose for their banal lives. After Manne steals a priceless painting from a group of petty criminals, Manne and Harri flee from the gangsters across Finland, while Ville goes to Paris. On the road they meet Veera, an old girlfriend of Harri's, and try to avoid the gangsters in pursuit.

When Hamlet discovers his father’s deceased body, he finds himself pulled into a power struggle as his scheming uncle attempts to secure a monopoly on the Scandinavian rubber duck industry. Will Hamlet avenge his father? Will he become the king of rubber ducks? Does any of it really matter?

A lawyer pays a visit to Matti Ojanperä, a bum living under a bridge in the Helsinki harbour, to inform him that he is about to inherit an American aunt of his. The sum 1,000,000 Fmk would be his, if only he meets the qualifications set by his aunt. He must show that he is capable of 'living properly' and possessing a 'respectable occupation and a family he can support'. Otherwise the money would go to a foundation the chairman of which the lawyer himself happens to be!

Irma Auer (Satu Silvo) is a former call-girl, trying to distance herself from the past. In a séance she is told to be 'marked for death', and is afterward threatened by her former pimp and abandoned by her groom, as he learns about her past. Irma attempts to commit suicide, and resurrects at the city morgue after being pronounced dead. After the incident, she wanders out direction-less, being pursued by the doctor who treated her and also a strange, tall man.

The Torniainen are a couple consisting of Raija, a flight attendant, and Hanski, a civil engineer. They have long wanted to have a child. Tests show that Hanski is infertile, and the doctor offers little hope.

April is the Cruelest of Months is a 1983 film directed by Suvi-Marja Korvenheimo, also known as Anssi Mänttäri, and the final part of the Korvenheimo trilogy. It was named after the first verse of T. S. Eliot's poem series The Waste Land. The film, shot in ten days, is a satire on the candles of Finnish culture.

Lauri Valjakka, a lecturer at the Department of Sociology, is thoroughly fed up with his family, whom he refers to as a "consumption unit," and his irritating, rigid wife. After a tedious train journey, Valjakka decides to leave his wife. He manages to escape to a station restaurant, where he meets an unusually honest man who has been abandoned and a straightforward woman.

Young Alex Sammakko has seen his brothers defy the law in a series of deeds that first land them in jail, and then, after they escape and return to their rural home, land them back in the lap of their locally notorious family. Alex wants nothing to do with them. He is in love with Mirja, whose family is not that different from the Sammakko's, but who shares Alex's viewpoints and feelings. Not helping matters is a police department convinced that all Sammakkos are bad, and the family itself, pressuring Alex to follow in their murky footsteps.

A group of kids goes on an adventure to help their scientist friend.

Talkative, hyperactive young drifter Ville Alfa goes around Helsinki, basically trying to borrow money from friends and strangers by means of an incessant delivery of quirky and snappy quasi-intellectual lines and fabricated excuses.

Anna Kelanen is an ex-model, who just has been released from prison. She thinks back on her life, when she was a rather successful model, and on the things that went wrong.

No synopsis available yet.

When a new man appears in Tuula's life, Jorma does not tolerate the idea and begins to yearn back for his ex-wife. They drift into a situation where both face a big choice that has far-reaching implications for the rest of their lives.

Not to be confused with any of the sequels to Sylvester Stallone's classic Oscar-winning Rocky, this short film from Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki is actually meant as a parody of the late Cold War-era Rocky IV, which saw Stallone's character taking on a juiced-up Russian fighter played by Dolph Lundgren. In this 1986 send-up, Rock'y, played by Silu Seppala, goes head to head with Soviet Igor (Sakari Kuosmanen) and loses.

TV play about the legend of Lalli.

A Finnish adaptation of Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

A man fakes his own suicide in order to see how his close ones react.

Matti turns 16 and becomes a man, at least in his father's eyes. Matti wanders around Helsinki, and strange people cling to him like flies to sticky flypaper. At the same time, Matti's girlfriend Leila waits for him somewhere.

Set during the Second World War in the Finnish war zone.

Three young people, two boys and a girl, meet on a Friday evening in an urban post-disaster setting which has brought Helsinki to ruins. The boys' sole purpose of life is to play a Flip-Flop pinball machine.

According to Mänttäri, the film is about a woman as portrayed through four female characters.

A new ice age is coming to England. All energy sources have been depleted and despair is taking over the earth. The young king decides to use his last trump card before his power collapses and anarchy reigns over the island kingdom.

Anssi Mänttäri’s low-budget movies with their intimate content have become classics. In this black comedy that takes place in Helsinki in summer the main character (played by Mänttäri himself) jumps from one bar and bed to the next. Especially vulgar black humour.

Matti Pellonpää (1951-1995) was one of the most talented Finnish actors of his generation. In Eero Tuomikoski's documentary, we meet Pellonpää in 1984, after Kaurismäki's Arvottomat film, but before his actual big breakthrough.

Follows the life of a pauper child Vike Nilonpoika from the early 1900's to the 1960s. During this time he works as a lumberjack in Lapland after running away from the despotic master. He soon becomes familiar with hookers, card hustlers and alcohol.

A former Red Rebellion leader returns home after being imprisoned for his participation in the Finnish Civil War, but soon finds out that wartime mindsets still linger in the heads of people.

No synopsis available yet.

Liisa, a young nurse returns to a remote island where she has spent the summer leaves in her youth. She soon gets to know some of the regular residents on the island, Pekka and Paula. During the summer party the underlying tensions mount.

In 17th-century Pohjola, young Antti Puuhaara is looking for himself, because he has grown up with no knowledge of his childhood. Two actors, the tragedian and the comedian, who were banished from Tsarist Russia to Karelia, had predicted to the crooked merchant Markki Bohattov that Antti's fate would become intertwined with his own. When Antti falls in love with Bohattov's daughter Darja, the father has to arrange for her to marry the tar merchant Arho Mustahatu.

It follows a year in the life of a family in the North-Eastern part of Finland. From the gloomy days of winter to the Mid Summer wedding festivities.

When Continuation War started in Summer 1941, German soldiers arrived to Oulu. With their charm they conquered women and town boys. Finnish boys communicated with them on many levels: had trades, worked as interpreters, rotated business, spied on German love adventures and fought with each other about the favor of soldiers. In autumn 1944, the war was ending. Germans left Oulu by leaving behind fragile relationships, bastard kids and unfinished businesses. The most shocking of all was the faith of young Jake...

Dances are ending. Last chance for women and men to find someone.