Illume

Once upon a time there was a large Finnish company called Nokia that manufactured the world’s best and most innovative mobile phones. Nokia’s annual budget was larger than that of the Government of Finland and their phones spread everywhere and changed the whole culture of communication. But then something changed. Film portrays the rise and fall of Nokia and the Finnish mobile phone industry. Nokia engineers, designers and managers tell their story about the creation, success and downfall of the Finnish mobile phone.

Documentary about Finnish film theaters - about their past, disappearance and future. And at the same time universal story how cinema is undeniably connected with life.

The story of Agit Prop, communist band established in 1970.

How to Fix the World? is a comprehensive and informative documentary about direct action in the 1990s and 2000s, directed by Jouko Aaltonen. In the documentary, anarchists, climate activists, and squatters openly describe their experiences and link them to mainstream phenomena in society. A wide range of archive material sheds a light on the history of direct action and activism in the Finnish society.

A film about the monster of Lapland, Mr. Lordi, who after winning the Eurovision Song Contest loses everything, almost everything.

The action in the film takes place in the Far East, on an uninhabited island called Rikord in the Peter the Great Gulf of the Sea of Japan. The lead character, called Fatei after his father, and his family have their own marine farm where they harvest delicacies from the sea. In amazing images of the underwater world and land-scapes of the Primorsky (Maritime) Territory of the Russian Far East, the film Fatei and the Sea tells the story of a little man whose life is inseparable from the big world around him.

In the vast expanse of desert East of Atlas Mountains in Morocco, seasonal rain and snow once supported livestock, but now the drought seems to never end. Hardly a blade of grass can be seen, and families travel miles on foot to get water from a muddy hole in the ground. Yet the children willingly ride donkeys and bicycles or walk for miles across rocks to a "school of hope" built of clay. Following both the students and the teachers in the Oulad Boukais Tribe's community school for over three years, SCHOOL OF HOPE shows students Mohamed, Miloud, Fatima, and their classmates, responding with childish glee to the school's altruistic young teacher, Mohamed. Each child faces individual obstacles - supporting their aging parents; avoiding restrictions from relatives based on traditional gender roles - while their young teacher makes do in a house with no electricity or water.

Helsinki, Forever is a montage film about the city of Helsinki by the award-winning Finnish film director and academic Peter von Bagh. The film draws a portrait of Helsinki and also acts as an essay on Finnish culture in a wider sense. It shows Helsinki as captured by leading Finnish feature film and documentary makers over a period of one hundred years.

A documentary film about Martta Koskinen, the last executed woman in Finland during the war in 1943. Martta was a Seamstress who lived in Helsinki during the Second World War. She was one of the post-civil war (in 1918) generation for whom the war had meant a disappointment in the system and failure in unity of the Finnish nation. The legacy of the civil war had left systems of persecution in place for those with socialist ideals. Martta and her fellow revolutionaries were determined to continue the resistance movement although they knew that at worst it could cost their lives. Martta was imprisoned twice before she was shot. She was an idealist, whose seemingly harmless, naive beliefs in peace and justice were the most dangerous traits a person could have at the time.

A little Nenets girl Neko is taken against her will from her home to a boarding school in a remote Russian village. Forced to adapt to a foreign culture and new customs, Neko rebels and decides to flee, hoping to get back to her family and old habits.

This documentary follows a bustrip from Tallinn to Kaliningrad. A route that was so common in the Soviet times now passes through 4 different countries and crosses 3 different borders.

Five years in the making, based on six lengthy interviews filmed on six different locations in Saint Petersburg, we meet an outspoken artist who covers here his entire life and prolific career. The locations were Sokurov’s own favourites, where he felt at home.

During the Continuation War, there were dozens of POW camps in Finland. About the third of 70,000 prisoners died during the first year of war. Most of the archives of the camps were destroyed and the majority of the war crimes were never revealed.

For the first time in its history, Finland became an autonomous state when it broke away from a crumbling Russian empire in 1917. Witnessing the upheaval of the First World War and all too aware of the threat posed both outside and within its borders, the newly installed government initiated harsh and draconian policies for its younger generation. All children and youths were drilled in the importance of discipline, rectitude and nationalism. With no exceptions.

A sensitive and intimate portrait of Ivanna, a nomadic reindeer herder in the Russian Arctic and mother of five small kids. Ivanna is forced to leave the traditional way of life and emigrate to the city, following her own dreams, due to the quickly deteriorating conditions of life in the tundra. We follow her life for several years.

A movie about two women who are mothers to the same child, and a child who belongs to two different worlds.

"Himmlers Kantele Player" - about Finnish student, who decides to leave University of Sorbonne and walk from Paris to Helsinki in the spring of 1935. On his way, in Germany, he meets Heinrich Himmler, who is attracted by a traditional Finnish instrument, kantele. Himmler employs Yrjö as researcher to the Ahnenerbe institute to find the Aryan roots from the runic singing culture of Finnish Carelia.

A documentary puppet animation about Iiti’s (28) moving in day. As if a sign from the universe for her poor life choices, there seems to be a nightmarish mouse lurking in the shadows of her new home. Iiti has to get rid of the mouse by whatever means necessary. She arms herself with mouse traps, lethal spray and even an ultrasonic repellant. But the nasty mouse problem just escalates and ultimately leads Iiti to a strange coincidence. Could Iiti be a mouse herself?

Peter von Bagh takes us on a trip to his homeland and Oulu, a small Finnish town, tracing the turbulent changes it has undergone in the 20th century. A life of the filmmaker, a history of his home and a history of cinema intersect in this magical film that works like a time machine. (text: International FIlm Festival Rotterdam