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Einari Paakkanen

Einari Paakkanen

Directing

Biography

Einari Paakkanen is an award-winning filmmaker known for his warm, intimate, and human-centered storytelling. His films have been screened internationally at major festivals including CPH:DOX, Sheffield DocFest, and Visions du Réel. His film KARAOKE PARADISE was shortlisted for the Best Documentary at the European Film Awards and won the Jussi Award for Best Finnish Documentary. Einari holds an MA in Documentary Directing from ESCAC in Barcelona and has participated in programs such as IDFAcademy, Twelve for the Future, Ice & Fire, MFI’s Script2Film, and Berlinale Talents. In addition to directing, he has also worked as an editor, sound recordist, teacher, and festival programmer. He has served on the boards of the Finnish Documentary Guild and DocPoint ry. His latest co-directed short documentary, PUOLANKA PUSSY RALLY (2026) won the Special Prize and The European Short Film Audience Award the Tampere Film Festival.

Known For

Black Ice
5.2

Saara is a middle-aged doctor who one day finds out that her architect-husband Leo is having an affair with a younger woman, Tuuli. Instead of revealing her true identity, Saara pretends to be someone else and makes friends with Tuuli. At the same time she is planning the best way to revenge her husband and his lover.

Black Ice

2007
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Mark and Harri are two Finnish men who have volunteered to fight in Ukraine. Their return to civilian life proves difficult: PTSD symptoms, clinging to the emotional extremes caused by war, and the struggle to find meaning in life at times feel overwhelming. In trauma-informed therapy, these symptoms are processed and their experiences revisited.

Invisible Enemy

2026
Games People Play
5.3

Group of old friends gather in a summer villa to celebrate a surprise birthday party for Mitzi, who is the dramatic focal point of the group. The weekend starts ominously when Mitzi does not respond well to the surprise party. It turns out that Mitzi has just filed for divorce and has been looking forward to a peaceful weekend. The tense situation takes a new turn when Mitzi's best friend brings her new boyfriend for a visit, who happens to be a Swedish film star. Familiar surroundings and the old rituals get to the core of the group and make them forget their adulthood. Revelations, not meant to harm the balance, make them reassess their past as well as their present.

Games People Play

2020
Gimme Some Respect
6.0

Young Siiri is starting her life on her own. She wants to be independent and live a normal life, although she is mentally handicapped. She begins to make true of her dreams, where she has a real working place and she hopes to find also a husband.

Gimme Some Respect

2010
Princess
5.8

Princess tells the true story of former cabaret dancer Anna Lappalainen's redemptive struggle with insanity, who checked in to Finland's Kellokoski Psychiatric Hospital in 1945.

Princess

2010
Dirty Bomb
3.8

Mirccu has a dream job as the PR coordinator of a record company. When her boss, the music mogul Martin threatens to fire her, she is forced to find her own way to success. Together with her football-playing boyfriend Roba who is recovering from an ankle injury she has to reflect whether the good times are really over, and to what lengths they are willing to go to survive. She is given one last chance to prove herself by successfully launching the career of an obnoxious fifteen-year-old teenage star-to-be with the code name Dirty Bomb.

Dirty Bomb

2011
My Father from Sirius
6.7

My father from Sirius is a film about a boy who grew up believing his father is a messenger between the Earth and the outer space. Now the boy has become a man who wants to find out what is true in his father’s worldview. And what is not. Veikko Paakkanen, the father of the director Einari Paakkanen, believes that he’s able to cure people from cancer, see extraterrestial beings and contact the afterlife.

My Father from Sirius

2016
Puolanka Pussy Rally
N/A

Puolanka, a tiny village in Northern Finland is famous for its population decline, but also for its dark sense of humor about it. As the long summer evenings stretch out, teenage boys celebrate their new driver’s licences by endlessly circling the same few streets, while an older generation of local gents, proudly known as The Parliament, has already parked itself permanently at the petrol station café. Here, hunting and the legendary “Pussy Rally” aren’t taboos but badges of cultural identity. The only mystery that seems unsolved: where have all the women gone?

Puolanka Pussy Rally

2026
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Permanent Together

2013
Karaoke Paradise
6.6

Evi, Finland’s most experienced karaoke hostess, wants to hug her customers’ pain away. With thousands of bars and kilometres behind her, yet again she packs her equipment and travels through the northern landscapes of Finland. Toni, the shyest guy in the world, catches everyone’s eye on the stage. Kari is searching for love and sings in his empty karaoke car repair shop. Elina can hardly walk because of Parkinson’s, but punk songs make her dance. Laura sings because talking is too painful. Karaoke Paradise is a story of how the Finns have found a unique way out of loneliness.

Karaoke Paradise

2022
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The Finest and the Greatest

2008
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The film is a personal documentary and a growth story about ten-year-old Farah who moved to Finland from Palestine.

Cross-country

2019
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In a Helsinki suburb on a Friday evening, a middle‑aged mother and her teenage daughter each go out separately with friends. Both seek validation and flirt with self‑image, desiring to feel attractive, young, and alive.

Girls' Night

2008
Forgetting Lenin
N/A

For many Finns, Lenin is to thank for Finland’s independence from Russia in 1917. But with Putin’s aggression in Ukraine, citizens of the town of Kotka have to re-evaluate their views about Finland’s last remaining Lenin statue.

Forgetting Lenin

2024
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A Catastrophic Road Movie documentary in search of a virtuous politician ... that's if he is not extinct ! Antonio , Einari, Ivan ( and a makeshift boom ) travel from Helsinki to Barcelona, Buenos Aires to Montevideo and to the desert of Bolivia in search of a utopia ,an ideal. Something concrete on which to build a new future'

Promised Land

2015
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One night Thon went drinking with two friends and disappeared. What happened? Where is Thon? A mystery and an absurd manhunt that eventually involves John F. Kennedy, Elvis and the whole planet.

Where Is Thon?

2016