Menu
© 2026 The Couch Critic
Browse 35 movies from Jörn Donner Productions
Harri is one of Sweden's many Finnish immigrant-workers. While in Sweden, the illiterate Harri marries and has a child. After accidentally killing a man in a fight, he flees back across the border to Finland and begins to pick up the pieces of his life, but soon, the police come looking for him.
Jan 1977
A doctor, her daughter, and her young housekeeper spend their summer on a remote island.
Oct 1970
Finnish friends escape taxes to Florida.
Feb 1990
Finnish porn movie producer Pertsa returns from America to his home country to continue his profession with hopelessly small budgets and incompetent casts and crews. A self-ironic satire about director Donner's scandalous fame in late 1960s Finland, notorious for a graphic long shot of his penis pointing northeast.
Feb 1970
In this somber, psychological drama about the conflict between a man's innermost feelings and a society that puts these feelings in a strait jacket, the mood is ruminative and depressing throughout. Alone, Viktor (Sven Wolter) heads off for his usual summer vacation to some islands where he can ostensibly look for antiques for his wife's shop in Stockholm. His marriage is a failure or worse -- he raped his wife before he left home, and he is obsessed by erotic imaginings. Once on the islands, he makes friends with a little girl whose mother is mentally disturbed and is kept by her husband in a locked room. The islanders are as tight-lipped as Viktor, and any communication is stiff and artificial. Viktor's own alienation begins to slip as he takes surprising, violent action to turn around the imprisoned mother's life -- but it does not work, nothing seems to work -- and his last actions indicate that he may not be willing to simply give up.
Mar 1984
Long-time cohabiting couple Petteri and Liisa wake up with a terrible hangover and realize to their horror that they got married the night before. Throughout the day, the couple argues and reminisces about their previous relationships, but by evening they are ready to reconcile.
Feb 1972
Paavo Mäkinen's alcoholism is hard on the whole family. His wife Terttu falls into depression and is hospitalized. Their children Marja, Tapsa, and Sanna each show symptoms in their own way: leaving home, drinking, skipping school. Will Paavo manage to stop drinking for the sake of his family?
Oct 1976
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.
Oct 1982
The events surrounding a factory in a small town are gone through in documentary style.
Feb 1973
Minister Korkolainen happens to bump into his ex-girlfriend from years ago. They end up spending the night together, discussing the past and politics.
Feb 1986
By chance Erik meets Viivi, an Estonian violinist playing in the Stockholm subway. They start an intense romance. Erik's mother dislikes the relationship, not having forgotten her escape from Estonia during the war. She reveals facts from the past and Erik finds out that his Swedish father adopted him. His real father was an Estonian nazi. Viivi has grown up in communist Estonia where her father was a party member and worked for the KGB.
Aug 1998
Tells the story of young Anja, a teenage girl living in an approved school (otherwise known as a reform school), and the problems she faces in the outside world after running away.
Nov 1968
In this melodrama about love in wartime, Angela (Ida-Lotta Backman) is a Finnish nurse in Lapland who begins a torrid affair with Thomas Schmidt (Mathieu Carriere), a wounded German army captain. Their love for each other is verboten in Finland, where the Germans occupy northern Lapland until the end of the war. Finland had formed a brief alliance with Germany to fight an invading Russia in the winter of 1939, but when the Russians won that battle and took more than 16,000 square miles of land away from Finland, it was too late to successfully rout the Germans from Finnish soil. So for the entire war, the Finns were fighting Germany on their own national territory -- which makes the love affair between a Finnish nurse and German soldier a very complex issue. While Angela receives different reactions from her friends, acquaintances, and relatives, she continues on with her love for the German, against odds which are greater as time goes by.
Sep 1984
Docudrama about the Soviet occupation of a Finnish village in the fall before the Winter War.
Jun 1979
A story about Marja Maronen, a 30-year-old office worker who is self-centered and pursues love and wealth. After her father's death, Marja is plunged into a crisis that shakes her entire life, the consequences of which are particularly reflected in her relationships and working life.
Jan 1972
Documentary about expeditions of Kai Donner to Siberia.
Apr 2007
A heavily indebted construction entrepreneur robs a bank in Jakomäki, Helsinki. He takes two officers and one customer hostage from the bank. In addition to himself, the desperate robber threatens to blow up the hostages if the police who left to follow them try to prevent the escape.
Feb 1995
Nine Ways to Approach Helsinki, shot by Pirjo Honkasalo and Eero Salmenhaara, is a documentary on the capital of Finland.
Dec 1982
Johanna has fled Nazi Germany to visit a friend in Finland, and from there she continues on to her friend's family's estate. Once at the estate, Johanna passionately argues with her friend's pro-Nazi brother and at the same time, falls for the second, good-looking brother who shares her own anti-fascist feelings. The two are soon engaged in an active sexual relationship that continues as they travel north to an Arctic port.
Sep 1986
On the eve of the Finnish Civil War, the film follows the last days of Alfred Kordelin, the richest man in Finland.
Oct 1973