According to the story, the heroes of the backyard are "Impression from the moment when a child realizes that childhood is transient". The scriptwriters combined episodes in the film on Merima's two works and placed events in an unspecified town after the wars. Costumes and sculptures refer to the wooden houses of the 1940s and 1950s. The venues included Suomenlinna and the Ruiskumestari House in Helsinki Kruununhaa. The backyard heroes were filmed for 16mm film originally as a television movie , but also taken to theatrical release.
Jopi Mäki
According to the story, the heroes of the backyard are "Impression from the moment when a child realizes that childhood is transient". The scriptwriters combined episodes in the film on Merima's two works and placed events in an unspecified town after the wars. Costumes and sculptures refer to the wooden houses of the 1940s and 1950s. The venues included Suomenlinna and the Ruiskumestari House in Helsinki Kruununhaa. The backyard heroes were filmed for 16mm film originally as a television movie , but also taken to theatrical release.
1992-12-12
7
September of 1944, a few days before Finland went out of the Second World War. A chained to a rock Finnish sniper-kamikadze Veikko managed to set himself free. Ivan, a captain of the Soviet Army, arrested by the Front Secret Police 'Smersh', has a narrow escape. They are soldiers of the two enemy armies. A Lapp woman Anni gives a shelter to both of them at her farm. For Anni they are not enemies, but just men.
Minna and Leo run into each other by chance at a bar. As they walk together throughout the evening, sharing conversations and quiet moments, something begins to form between them.
On a quiet street in Helsinki, Sachie has opened a diner featuring rice balls. For a month she has no customers. Then, in short order, she has her first customer, meets Midori, a gangly Japanese tourist, and invites her to stay with her.
An aimless adolescent joins several itinerant misfits who live on the fringe of society and welcome at-risk youths into their fold.
A dramatic documentary film that deals with the Nazi rise to power in Germany in the 1930s and the development of the persecution of Jews up to the Holocaust. The film tells about the attitude of the Finnish government to the request for the handover of the Finnish Jews presented by Heinrich Himmler in the summer of 1942. The main focus of the film is the life of Jewish refugees in Finland in the years 1938-1942 and the attitude of the Finnish government to their handover in the fall of 1942.
Markus Viitanen, a sculptor living in Suomenlinna, has not seen his son Eero for fifteen years. When he learns of Eero's death, he sets out to find out what kind of person Eero grew up to be during his nineteen years of life, and how the nanny Katri relates to the rest of Eero's life.
Helsinki, 1945. The end of the war brings a new sense of artistic and social freedom for painter Tove Jansson. While focusing her artistic dreams on painting, the enchanting tales of the ‘Moomin’ creatures she told to scared children in bomb shelters, rapidly take on a life of their own, bringing international fame.
A love story of a 17 year old punk-rocker and a 15 year old runaway girl.
Through the eyes of two 12-year-old boys, the sexual revolution arrives in a conservative and religious small town in Northern Finland.
A ravishing story about little Pete and his survival and growth in the gray area between love and fear.
Northern small town girl, 18 year-old Henna is literally blinded by envy after stalking Silja, a girl moving from South and who seems to get everything Hanna dreams of. Diva of Finland is a story about rivalry between young women and getting over it.
An anthology of 5 different cab drivers in 5 American and European cities and their remarkable fares on the same eventful night.
Pasi returns to his childhood town, asked to reconfigure the local plywood factory. With a child on the way with his upper-class wife, Pasi sees an opportunity – this is his ticket to climb the professional ladder in the company. On arrival, he bumps into his childhood friend Janne, who works in the factory he is about to downsize. Pasi begins to struggle with the fact that he is supposed to care for the profits – not for the people.
A searing legal drama that centers on a highly credentialed child psychologist whose life is shattered when he's accused of sexually assaulting a young boy he's been treating.
An ordinary young boy called Nikolas sets out on an extraordinary adventure into the snowy north in search of his father who is on a quest to discover the fabled village of the elves, Elfhelm. Taking with him a headstrong reindeer called Blitzen and a loyal pet mouse, Nikolas soon meets his destiny in this magical and endearing story that proves nothing is impossible…
Reconstruction tells about a certain night in 1982, reconstructed in 2020 by the people who lived it through together. The film combines dance, drama and documentary, but most of all is a story of a friendship of a boy and a girl, and how jolly situations can turn sour and how, even though close, friends do not share same experiences – and that can have an effect on their friendship.
Lasse is an old racist who has lives in an apartment block filled with a selection of refugees and immigrants. Kamal is a 16-year old boy who's fed up in his life in Finland, and dreams of moving to Nairobi to live with his father. Only problem is that he doesn't have the money to buy the ticket.
In this pitch black comedy the rivalry between two neighbors escalates into an all out war. Through a maintenance error on a tractor they both end up, paralyzed, in a wheelchair. It seems they are doomed to stay together. They no longer focus their rage on each other but on the manufacturer of the tractor, in Helsinki. So get ready for a hilarious wheelchair road movie.
This Finnish romance tells of a young couple who vacation by the ocean. While there, the unsatisfied man decides he wants to end their relationship. Upon their return home, he has an overnight fling with another woman while his recently dumped girlfriend calmly waits outside his home. When the jilted woman begins to walk alone to her own apartment, she is struck by a passing car, and only then does the young man realize that he truly loves her.