Avanton Productions

Becoming Me is a film about three young women, Elli, Laura and Juulia. Each of them writes a blog on her life on the Internet, all of them sharing their lives with strangers. Each of them is struggling with the real or imagined demands and pressures of today’s society.

A Roma beggar on his knees raises many extreme emotions: guilt, rage, sympathy and frustration. Most people just walk on by, but there is always someone willing to help. In this film, the director follows the confrontations between the Roma beggars from Romania and Finnish people, and is forced to question, over and over again, her own ideas about helping.

Forever Yours is a film about children who have been taken into custody. Through the children, their biological parents and foster parents, the film depicts love in everyday life. The film explores the invisible bond between a child and a biological parent. Even when a child is taken into custody, the yearning for closeness to the biological parents and need for their approval never seems to disappear. This longing is a form of loneliness that the foster parents struggle to overcome. The film describes the entire foster care process: a child being brought into a shelter home, a teenager’s everyday life in a foster family, and siblings preparing to return to their biological mother, after five years in a foster family.

What would you like to see if you couldn’t see any more? A blind mother and her seven-year-old son teach each other how to navigate the world as his vision slowly fades and a new life awaits.

Helena, the main character of the film, grew up in a small town on the west coast of Finland in the 1960s and 70s, together with the emerging welfare in Finland. Her parents lived through the Second World War; her father was on the frontline, and her mother in her family home, burdened with helping to maintain the family. Helena’s family, the surrounding society and the era of her childhood profoundly shaped her experience. The landscapes of her childhood still live vividly in her mind.

Once a beloved playmate of her childhood, Markku had withdrawn into solitude, devoting his life to inner freedom and creativity rather than the expectations of society. Now his voice returns – sometimes playful, sometimes wounded, always searching – guiding Karin through his life’s work and opening space for an unusual collaboration between the living and the dead.