32 Films & TV Shows Set In Finland During The 20th Century
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Yellow Sulphur Sky
🇫🇮 Finland The 1970sIn his youth, the author Frej has already found a deep connection and passion with an upper-class girl, Stella Rabell, that has lasted between them through the decades. When Stella's older brother Alex falls victim to a stabbing attack, Frej begins to reminisce about the events of decades past. Frej's memories from the bright 1970s to the present day are filled with love, jealousy, betrayal, life and death.
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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 Eternal Road
🇷🇺 Russia 🇫🇮 Finland The 1930sFreedom lies beyond heaven and hell — Based on true events an epic story of one man's struggle for survival. Jussi Ketola, returns to Finland from the great depression struck America only to face growing political unrest. One summer night of 1930, nationalist thugs violently abduct Ketola from his home. Beaten and forced to walk the Eternal Road towards a foreign Soviet Russia, where cruelty seems to know no end, his only dream is to return to his family cost it what it may. Hope dies last.
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The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki
🇫🇮 Finland The 1960sSummer 1962 and Olli Mäki has a shot at the world championship title in featherweight boxing. From the Finnish countryside to the bright lights of Helsinki, everything has been prepared for his fame and fortune. All Olli has to do is lose weight and concentrate. But there is a problem – he has fallen in love with Raija.
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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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The Marshal of Finland
🇫🇮 Finland The 1910s The 1900sLife is like a mountain — Long time ago, there lived a man whose name was Gustaf Mannerheim, better known as the Marshal of Finland. He was given this title following his courage as an army man; he fought for the freedom of his small country, struggling to keep its independency. As small nations always do, this nation needed a true hero, and Gustaf was the true hero of them: brave, ambitious, successful. But what are the things a hero must always sacrifice? How can you live normal life if you think your country needs you more than your family? Gustaf became the most beloved person in his country and the nation loved him, he had succeeded to become the greatest soldier there ever was, but he still had lost the most important thing in his life – love. This is the story about an extraordinary man captured inside the great legend, who was longing for ordinary life, love and peace. But as we know it, life is like a mountain – there are ups and there are downs.
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Skeleton Crew
🇫🇮 Finland The 1970s The 2000sThere's no sequel for you! — Back in the early 1970s, at a mental institution near the Russian border, a crazed doctor, Dr. Anderson assumed the persona of "the Auteur," and began murdering his patients while filming the atrocities. Thirty years later, an American film crew has arrived at the hospital to shoot a horror film based on those awful events. The director, Steven, is determined to make the film as realistic as possible, a goal that doesn't seem too far-fetched when his Finnish sound men discover a hidden room in the hospital basement. There, perfectly preserved, are the original snuff films shot by "the Auteur". As Steven's obsession grows, his cast and crew begin to fear for his sanity. But this is only the beginning, because when Steven discovers actual camera used by "the Auteur", he assumes the role of the murderous doctor and the real slaughter begins.
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Hellsinki
🇫🇮 Finland The 1970s The 1960sHappiness, jail or the grave? — In the mid-1960s, three small-time Finnish bootleggers seize control of their Helsinki neighborhood's black-market liquor business.
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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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Tears of April
🇫🇮 Finland The 1910sThere is civil war in Finland. Between whites vs reds. A woman soldier of reds is captured by the whites. She is ordered to be executed. The lieutenat is enforced into a homosexual relationship with his commanding officer to save the Red female with whom he is infatuated.
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Ganes
🇸🇪 Sweden 🇫🇮 Finland The 1970s The 1960sRemu grew up in modest conditions. He dropped out from schoold during his teen age years and is making career as a small time criminal. His family's destiny is about to come true, and it's going to be the usual: jail, alcoholism and violent death. After learning about rock music Remu learns to play drums and pushes himself into different bands. His first time in jails interrupts his music career, but after being released he starts his own band; Hurriganes.
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The Border
🇫🇮 Finland The 1910sThe young man must set up a clear border between Finland and Russia, white and red, enemy and friend, us and them. While the task seems clear he finds out the execution of his command in concrete situations is very difficult. Right choices turn out to be wrong ones and correcting them make things worse.
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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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A Long Hot Summer
🇫🇮 Finland The 1980sThey were young. They were beautiful. They were born to win. — The story of a rock band "Kalle Päätalo" in the 1980s.
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The Jackal
Quebec 🇫🇮 Finland 🇷🇺 Russia District of Columbia The 1990sHow do you stop an assassin who has no identity? — Hired by a powerful member of the Russian mafia to avenge an FBI sting that left his brother dead, a psychopathic hitman known only as The Jackal proves an elusive target for the people charged with the task of bringing him down: a deputy FBI director, a Russian MVK Major, and a jailed IRA terrorist who can recognize him.
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Flight North
🇫🇮 Finland The 1930sJohanna (Katharina Thalbach) has fled Nazi Germany to visit a friend in Finland, and from there she continues on to her friend's family's estate. Once at the estate, Johanna passionately argues with her friend's pro-Nazi brother and at the same time, falls for the second, good-looking brother who shares her own anti-fascist feelings. The two are soon engaged in an active sexual relationship that continues as they travel north to an Arctic port.
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White Nights
🇫🇮 Finland 🇷🇺 Russia The 1980sAfter his plane crashes in Siberia, a Russian dancer, who defected to the West, is held prisoner in the Soviet Union. The KGB keeps him under watch and tries to convince him to become a dancer for the Kirov Academy of Ballet again. Determined to escape, he befriends a black American expatriate and his pregnant Russian wife, who agree to help him escape to the American Embassy.
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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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For the Matches
🇫🇮 Finland The 20th CenturyIn Eastern Finland, in Liperi to be exact, Anna-Liisa Ihalainen asks her husband Antti to get some matches from the Ihalainen household. Unfortunately that trip takes a little longer than expected...
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Inspector Palmu's Error
🇫🇮 Finland The 1930sA closed room mystery begins when an infamous tycoon is found dead in his bath tub. The famous police lieutenant Palmu is summoned to investigate.
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