Virpi Suutari

A People’s Radio – Ballads from a Wooded Country is a carnivalesque portrayal of the Finnish landscape of the soul and abode. The short film is based on the iconic YLE programme “People’s Radio”, and its visual material has been created by the road movie method of driving across summery Finland. The film paints a panorama of what Finland looks like today. Its narration progresses through humour into civic anarchy, ultimately also towards the longing for human connection.

Entrepreneur is a universal nature documentary about Finnish entrepreneurs. This warm and carnevalistic film portrays humans in the middle of ordinary everyday survival. The main protagonists come from two totally different kinds of landscapes, from two diffent time zones. There is a scenery of contemporary modern society and just a few hundred kilometres away we find a rural and nostalgic universe with forgotten people and land.Our first protagonists are Fellini-like family, going from village to another, trying to sell meat from a small meat truck and also run a tiny funfair business. The father, the mother and their four children are working together and trusting only in themselves, not in the help of society. While countryside family is counting coins, the other pair of entrepreneurs, the two well-educated women from the capital area, have invented a vegetable protein product called Pulled Oat, and have become millionaires. But have they also made a world a little bit better?

Aalto is one of the greatest names in modern architecture and design, Aino and Alvar Aalto gave their signature to iconic Scandic design. The first cinematic portrait of their life love story is an enchanting journey of their creations and influence around the world.

The Idle Ones is a profile of contemporary affairs - somewhere on the edge of Europe - in a place where unemployment for some young people is fast becoming a way of life. Covering a period of 18 months, the film follows the activities of a group of young men in their 20s who have finished their schooling and stayed in their home village - they loaf about unemployed since they can´t find any work in the remote district. The main characters are more or less idle young fellows whose stories link together and make up the film. Tinged with humour, The Idle Ones is a story about frustrated but vital young people in a period of transition, waiting for something to happen. For some, the waiting is becoming their life.

A modern fairy tale unfolds in the enchanting embrace of the Finnish forest, as young people seamlessly weave into the fabric of nature, swimming in crystalline lakes and revel in the calm presence of the ancient trees. This idyllic harmony is imperiled as the forest faces man-made extinction. Driven by her love for the forest, 22-year-old Ida becomes the leader of the new Forest Movement, coming face to face with Finnish forest industry giants and confronting generational bias.

Elegance is a short film about a group of Finnish men, and the style and elegance of hunting partridge and pheasant. The film’s protagonists are all wealthy men, for whom hunting is a treasured hobby, a passion and a way of life. The film unfolds in three acts on a scenic autumnal field. Meet the three businessmen: Nokia’s former CEO, Jorma Ollila, engineering company Kone Oy’s owner, Antti Herlin, and the charming narrator, Publishing Company Otava’s former CEO, Heikki A. Reenpää. His narration leads the viewer through hunting expeditions, creates the mood and introduces the people. Almost equally important are the gentlemens’ dogs: handsome pointers and setters, whose pedigrees, abilities and hunting prowess ultimately determine whether any birds are caught at all.

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Auf Wiedersehen Finnland deals with a largely silenced issue in Finnish history: the fate of Finnish women who left for Germany with German soldiers during the final stages of World War II.

The Kurppa family lives in a pastel-toned Finnish suburb. Kari dreams of striking it rich by selling soap and vitamins; his wife, Pirjo, pregnant with their fourth child, aspires to be a model. Their kids—Jani (6), Jonna (4), Sonja (3)—join them in their cluttered home. With limited work and lives spent mostly indoors, every day feels like an endless chaotic Sunday.

The story of the friendship, shared games and conversations between Finnish and Somali children in a suburb of Vantaa in 2004.

A roughly beautiful Hilton! gives the viewer a glimpse of life in a modern society, a life that young persons lead.

A glance across the border in northern Russia, where the small town of Montegorsk suffers under the heavy metal from industry. Nature is transformed into a poisonous desert: in long shots the camera probes the pale, skeleton-like branches of the dead trees. The small family, whose everyday life Helke and Suutari follow, lives in a state of waiting: waiting for the next German car, the next medical examination, the next holidays. White Sky exemplifies the artists‘ approach with currents of time flowing together: no one can say how long it will take for nature to regenerate itself here; yet people live here in their own time, with their own individual wishes and expectations.

Synti, is a wry film about themes like sense of guilt, sin and the role that morality plays in choices that people make every day. By setting day-to-day events against the background of the seven mortal sins: pride, wrath, jealousy, lechery, stinginess, idleness and gluttony.

Garden Lovers is a documentary love story about Finnish couples who have a passion for gardening. The film with comic undertones looks at their stories behind the hedges. The garden provides a framework for tales of relationship conflicts and joys; it depicts the many ways in which life can flourish; it gives strength and unites, but it also becomes a meeting place for farewells. There is an invisible bond that grows between the couples in the film; they comment and comfort each other with their own stories.