Saara Cantell

Seven stories of women. Occasionally intersecting with each other in everyday situations. Parallel episodes of hope and abandonment, addiction and infidelity, but also friendship and trust.

Anna is a 16-year old in a village where women are accused of witchcraft. It's based on the witch hunts on Åland, Finland in the 1600s.

Jill and Joy (both 9) live in their own house like any other little girls, except that they might be a little happier than most little girls, as they get to live in their own house specifically designed for the two. One December evening a small car, barely the size of a shoebox, pulls up in front their house, and a teensy-weensy family gets out; it's the McTiny family. The family has become homeless after a road roller smashed their home. Planning to live with the girls temporarily, the family moves in with Jill and Joy but soon finds out that not all big people have good intentions towards them. Jill and Joy's Winter is based on a beloved book by the same name, written by a Finnish writer named Marjatta Kurenniemi.

Roosa and her teen kids have just moved in with Roosa's new husband and his kids, when a schoolgirl is found nearby, stabbed to death. To her horror, Roosa starts suspecting her 16-year-old son Joel.

Hanna is a 30 something single woman from Helsinki. She has a good job and great friends and has almost given up on finding the Mr. Right. One night, Hanna meets Markus, a dark stranger who sweeps her off her feet.

A new orphanage opens near Jill and Joy's house, and a boy named Pekki runs away from there. Pekki ends up living in Jill and Joy's cabin and tells the girls how bleak life is in the orphanage under the strict command of the headmistress Minna Pinna.

An old man gets lost looking for a post office. Every time he turns around a street corner, he ends up in the same small café. The café owner builds an ice sculpture of the woman he admires.

11-year-old Unna travels in time to the stone age with the help of a magic drum.

Stars above follows the stories of three women from the same family across three different decades. The main characters – Saima, Tuulikki and Salla – each lives in the same country house. Saima´s story takes place in the war time 1942, when Finland fought against Soviet Union, Tuulikki´s story in colourful year 1978 and Salla´s story in the present day. Each woman is between 30 and 40. This deep and beautiful, yet humorous film pictures the encounters between people and the possibilities for choice. How much does the time we live in affect us - and our ability to hold on to our dreams? What are those things which we pass on from one generation to the next? What changes, what remains the same? And to what extent do mothers´ choices, let alone their unspoken secrets, affect their daughters´ lives?

Documentary film about a woman for whom the sex symbol stamp was a life-long curse - and a gift. A film in which the life story of one woman shows the social atmosphere as the decades change - values and prejudices at their most exposed. A film about Anneli Sauli, Finland's last film star.

Jill and Joy receive a mission from their neighbors Tingelstein and Tangelstein: the ladies send the girls to look after their absentminded inventor brother Gadgetus. Jill and Joy get to know the wonders of Gadgetus’s farm, but everything is at risk of being destroyed when Samuel Shortcut arrives on his bulldozer, ready to destroy everything so that a new highway can be built in the area. Jill and Joy save the farm with the help of a device invented by Gadgetus, but before that they have to get to know the world of dreams and find help from there. Armstrong, a miniature pig, also takes part in the adventure and helps Jill and Joy, along with the other people living in Rose Alley.

When two best friends Jill and Joy find a huge sum of money on the street on the first day of the summer holiday, they decide to buy a house from the mysterious Mrs. Rosebud. It’s a real dream house: measured and equipped exactly for two little seven-year-old girls’ requirements. Based on a beloved children’s book, Jill and Joy is a story of a dream summer without parents or boundaries. Anything can and will happen as reality and fantasy magically intertwine.

Thirty-year-old twins Jenna and Joni find out that their father has a third child. Sister Jóna lives in Iceland. The siblings' meeting will change everyone's world, relationships and future. As each searches for meaning in their own lives, surging between one father, two homelands and three adult siblings, from reunification to separation and back again. Over the years, the siblings encounter themselves and each other, their similarities and differences.

The director documents the events leading to a reunion with her estranged father.

Short film based on Tove Jansson's novel.