13 Films & TV Shows Set In Finland During The 1940s
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Tove
🇫🇮 Finland The 1940sIn search of freedom and desire — 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.
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Unknown Soldier
🇫🇮 Finland 🇷🇺 Russia The 1940sFinland, behold, thy daylight now is dawning. — The film follows Finnish army machine gun company in Continuation War against Soviet Union, 1941–1944. Based on Väinö Linna's best selling novel Tuntematon Sotilas (The Unknown Soldier) and the novel's uncensored version, Sotaromaani (A War Novel).
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Tom of Finland
🇫🇮 Finland The 1950s The 1940sThey called it filth. It became a revolution. — Touko Laaksonen, a decorated officer, returns home after a harrowing and heroic experience serving his country in World War II, but life in Finland during peacetime proves equally distressing. He finds peace-time Helsinki rampant with persecution of the homosexual and men around him even being pressured to marry women and have children. Touko finds refuge in his liberating art, specialising in homoerotic drawings of muscular men, free of inhibitions. His work – made famous by his signature ‘Tom of Finland’ – became the emblem of a generation of men and fanned the flames of a gay revolution.
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The Midwife
🇫🇮 Finland The 1940sA midwife's forbidden love story... separated by war, joined by love at first sight. — Helena has worked as a kind of midwife on the eve of the Lapland War. She wants to leave everything behind, and a suitable opportunity arises when she falls in love with a German-Finnish officer Johannes, who is leaving to German-led Titovka prison camp in the Soviet Union. Helena enlists into the camp as a nurse, where she experiences the brutality of war.
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Max Manus: Man of War
Scotland 🇸🇪 Sweden 🇳🇴 Norway 🇫🇮 Finland The 1940sMax Manus is a Norwegian 2008 biographic war film based on the real events of the life of resistance fighter Max Manus (1914–96), after his contribution in the Winter War against the Soviet Union. The story follows Manus through the outbreak of World War II in Norway until peacetime in 1945.
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1944 The Final Defence
🇫🇮 Finland The 1940sThe Soviet army breaks through the Finnish defences on the Karelian Isthmus in June 1944, advancing with overwhelming force. Somehow, the Finnish troops must find the strength to fight back, with all odds against them. The Battle of Tali-Ihantala was the largest battle ever fought in the history of the Nordic countries. This film depicts the true events through five separate stories.
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Beyond the Front Line
🇫🇮 Finland The 1940sA movie based on real wartime diaries tells the story of the Swedish speaking Finns' infantry regiment 61. The story follows the regiment during the Continuation War from 1942 to 1944 and from Syväri to the Karelian Isthmus where they faced some of the most grueling battles against the Soviet Union.
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The Cuckoo
🇫🇮 Finland The 1940sShe's Making Peace One Man at a Time. — 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.
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Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
🇲🇽 Mexico New York Massachusetts Pennsylvania California 🇫🇮 Finland 🇩🇪 Germany The 1970s The 1980s The 1960s The 1950s The 1940sSome things are better left top secret. — Television made him famous, but his biggest hits happened off screen. Television producer by day, CIA assassin by night, Chuck Barris was recruited by the CIA at the height of his TV career and trained to become a covert operative. Or so Barris said.
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The Unknown Soldier
🇫🇮 Finland 🇷🇺 Russia The 1940sSecond silver screen adaption of the Finnish war book by Väinö Linna. The story is based on Linna's experiences as an infantry man in the Finnish army during the so called "Continuation War" (1941-1944).
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The Unknown Soldier
🇫🇮 Finland 🇷🇺 Russia The 1940sIt is the summer of 1941. An eastern-Finnish machine gun company receives an order to turn in their surplus equipment. The company is transferred to the front lines. The next morning the soldiers wake to the sound of guns - the war has begun. The Finnish troops attack and quickly move across the border. The young, nervous rookies of the company get their baptism of fire, and the men become familiar with death and the hardships of war. Under strength and badly equipped they fight a superior enemy. The lists of heroes and of the dead seem endless. Edvin Laine's epic interpretation of Väinö Linna's war novel "Tuntematon Sotilas" is an entire chapter in the book of Finnish movie history.
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The Bob Mathias Story
🇫🇮 Finland England The 1950s The 1940sFilm biography of the Olympics Decathlon champion, with the famous athlete and his wife playing themselves.
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G.P.U.
🇸🇪 Sweden 🇫🇮 Finland 🇳🇱 Netherlands 🇷🇺 Russia The 1940s The 1930sOlga, a Russian refugee from Bolshevik terror, has joined the Soviet secret police to find the man responsible for killing her parents. Meanwhile, a young Baltic couple are caught up in the schemes of the communists.
