Finnish Film Foundation

A dark comedy about humankind’s desire to love and to be loved. Centred around neediness, intimacy and romance. Told through a series of loosely connected, tender and absurd scenes, the film follows people who are searching for closeness and acceptance. In a world that preaches self-control, the film explores the sides we try to hide, such as feeling needy and pathetic. The stories overlap and reappear, gradually forming a portrait of collective longing.

Trying to escape her broken past, Sarah O’Neill is building a new life on the fringes of a backwood rural town with her young son Chris. A terrifying encounter with a mysterious neighbour shatters her fragile security, throwing Sarah into a spiralling nightmare of paranoia and mistrust, as she tries to uncover if the disturbing changes in her little boy are connected to an ominous sinkhole buried deep in the forest that borders their home.

Russian army recruits complete training and take their posting in late 1980s Afghanistan, where the insurgents are slowly gaining the upper hand.

Jalil is 17-year-old boy living with his Iranian family in a suburb near Helsinki. Though he has lived in Finland all his life, it seems hard for him to find acceptance among the "native" Finns. At home he faces the opposite problem. His parents demand him to respect Iranian cultural traditions. Jalil is about one day in the life of a boy standing on the edge of two cultures. On this summer day big things are bound to culminate; religion, identity, love.

A foreign woman in a burqa brings her young son to a Copenhagen police station to file a complaint against her abusive husband, but the translator assigned to her seems unwilling to convey the true meaning of her words. A tense, diamond-hard film about cultural isolation and bureaucratic ignorance.

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.

Palle Hagman is a charming dreamer with great and dazzling powers of persuasion. His dream is to become a big star in the entertainment world. When he gets the chance to put on a variety show, he believes that the road to success is wide open. But Palle is a great optimist, and when the setbacks become too many, he is forced to resort to "white lies" to save himself and his family...

The final film in The Trilogy of the Sacred and the Satanic, Atman is a spectacular epic across India, all documented on stunning 35mm. When his mother dies, a devout Hindu man named Jamana Lal begins a 3,000-mile journey in her honor. The destination is the holy city of Haridwar, but to get there, Lal, a 35-year-old whose legs have been paralyzed since childhood, must travel up the Ganges River. He is joined by his brother and his wife as well as by director Pirjo Honkasalo and her small, intrepid crew. Midway through, a miracle occurs, as Lal crosses paths with a kindhearted woman named Shanta. Atman blossoms into a love story for the ages.

Members of a devout Christian congregation try to start a new life in Palestine.

The story takes us to an island with no future, given that it’s already partly submerged underwater. A woman is caring for ten or so very elderly individuals, but the arrival of five travellers turns their lives upside down…

Fred Daly returns to Ireland with nowhere to live but his car. Then dope-smoking 21-year-old Cathal parks beside him, and brightens up his lonely world. Encouraged by Cathal, Fred meets attractive music teacher Jules. Growing closer, these three outsiders are set on a course that will change their lives forever.

The Role is about a brilliant actor in revolutionary Russia who takes on the greatest role of his life - the role of another man. Influenced by the ideas of symbolism and the Silver Age, he decides to slip into the life of his doppelganger – a revolutionary leader in the new Soviet Russia. First intrigued, then obsessed, he flings himself into the role and lives it to the hilt… even when the play of the life he is writing heads towards a tragic finale. Based on true incidents in the lives of Russia’s symbolists, this gripping film explores how far one man will go for the role of a lifetime.

Set against a worsening environmental crisis, a character-driven narrative charts the human and geopolitical fallout of climate change.

"Make Believe" - A film about the love of life, love of truth and love between two people who do not understand that they love each other.

Little Pu spends a summer in Norrland with all his relatives. He and his brother get to hear the story about the watchmaker who hung himself, learns to shoot with a bow and follow his father on a bicycle trip.

Rome, Paris and Helsinki right after the Madrid bombings. Three stories about people who, for different reasons, are afraid of others – the eponymous "thy neighbor." A humanity full of differences, but at the same time, with very similar feelings. So similar that their stories appear almost parallel and complementary.

Interwoven with scenes that are meant to grab attention by their stunning composition, this biographical look at Finland's violinist Arto Arsi is not so much a narration of his childhood and early years, as an attempt to artistically show what was happening inside his psyche during that time. Literally sold to a master teacher, Sergei Rippas (Tarmo Manni) by his mother when he was still a child, the violin prodigy was forcefully and strictly raised to practice, practice, and perfect his technique. Once an adult, Arsi finds a way to escape the rigors of a U.S. tour and drowns his overworked self in drink, or seeks out one-night stands, or otherwise lets off steam. The tightly-wound spring that has been coiled since he was forced into his grueling training and work sessions -- shown through symbolic images -- eventually snaps in a healthy way, freeing Arsi at last to continue on, simply for the love of music.

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

Set on a remote farm on the west coast of Iceland in late summer 1936. Hrefna, encouraged by her grandmother’s stories, begins to mix past and future in her imagination, travelling back to the 14th century.

Teenage boy Misha attends hypnosis sessions with psychotherapist Volkov to recover from sleepwalking. As a result, Misha falls under the influence of a hypnologist to such an extent that he ceases to understand where reality is and where illusion is. After the mysterious death of one of Volkov’s patients, Misha decides to conduct an investigation to get to the bottom of the truth. But what if the dream and reality merged into one, and in the end he becomes the main suspect?