Green lights dance across a star-filled sky, and snowflakes sparkle on the trees. It is little wonder Lapland is famous as a realm of elves and flying reindeer, the magical home of Santa Claus. This northernmost region of mainland Europe, however, is a real place, with real animals such as reindeer, Great Gray owls, wolverines, eagles, wolves, musk oxen and Brown bears who live out their lives in the tundra and forest.
Five lapp women return home from Norwegian prison camp after leaving Finland with German soldiers during World War II.
Goodbye Tornio is a vivid depiction of being young, fearlessly following your dreams and figuring things out on your own as you go. Eighteen-year-old Vilma celebrates her graduation from high school, with toasts from loving parents and parties with best friends, before leaving her hometown in Lapland and moving to the big city.
American and British friends studying in Finland decide to take up an offer to travel to the Arctic Circle and experience the mysterious, pagan celebration of Midsummer's Eve.
When filmmaker Mari Soppela took her children and husband to live for a year on a sacred mountain in her native Finland, she was fulfilling a lifelong dream to share the arctic wilderness of her childhood with her family. But when years later her children turn the camera onto her, she is forced to confront her motivation for filming their lives in this searching and searingly honest cinematic exploration of identity, belonging and motherhood. Filmed over the course of 27 years, Mother Land challenges us all to examine the landscapes we carry within us and the narratives we create to make sense of our lives.
The documentary Rap and Reindeer follows the life of 18-year-old Sámi rapper Mihkku Laiti, who lives in the northernmost corner of Sámiland. The film is a coming-of-age story, following Mihku on his journey towards a career as a musician and rise to stardom in the midst of varying expectations. He’s charmed the crowd on Talent Suomi and proudly wears the Sámi clothing he has styled himself. He raps and yoiks in harmony, designs his own brand on his computer but also masters the skill of laborious reindeer herding. Above all, he sees his own unique roots and the Sámi language as his greatest strength. The future makes him wonder: to follow his father’s footsteps or to reach for his dreams.
Selling the Silence is a creative documentary film. It witnesses the rise and fall of one family of entrepreneurs, the Kuukkanen family from Salla, Lapland, side-by-side with the current changes in the values of our society. In combining private and personal family memories with ongoing changes in the scenery, the documentary asks: How to avoid irreversible changes in the nature when earning your living? Selling the Silence is a journey to the North, past and present. Sometimes the journey can be surprising, sometimes sad, sometimes absurd in a black Finnish way. When the film asks: ”What is the price of the wilderness?”, it is also a question of identity: Who you really are? What is your real nature?
Pete and Runt travel to Lapland to hunt the snowman in the hope of a cash reward, and takeJustiina along as a bait.
A story about the life of reindeer emperor Mosku in Eastern Lapland at the beginning of the 20th century, when social conditions and the practice of traditional livelihoods are in transition. Mosku is involved in reindeer disputes and skirmishes and is also involved in the bandit hunt on the side of Soviet Russia led by Wallenius, the commander of the Lapland border guard.
Felix cannot write to Alice. So he goes very far to find his words, to Finland. Up in the Far North, he meets Sampo, a bus driver. This encounter will lead him to face the night, the cold, and himself.
When two former top orienteers end up in a snowstorm in Lapland wilderness, they face an impossible orienteering task: how to reach your destination when you can't tell earth from sky?
In 1860s Lapland, gold diggers Jakob Ervast and Nils Lepistö, who previously worked in California, embark on an arduous journey towards the north. The friends find gold at the first excavation site, which Kittilä's crown prince Konrad Planting and Edvard Manninen also start looking for.
The film follows two years of the extremely endangered arctic fox's attempt to return to Finnish nature as a breeding species, as well as the people who try to save the species. Kimmo Ohtonen's tireless toil is finally rewarded, when he manages to capture for the first time in Finland the journey of an arctic fox family in almost 30 years, from the start of romance to raising pups. This is the first time that the reproduction of an arctic fox has been recorded on video. There is a unique journey in the foothills of the North, culminating in a historic event.
The Finnish War 1808-1809 is over and Russia has conquered Finland from Sweden. All weapons in the country are meant to be handed over to the new ruler, but in some small places people are preparing for an uprising.
A dissatisfied teen disappears from his small town, leaving friends to wonder about his whereabouts.
A documentary highlighting some of the oddest, strangest and more grotesque examples of human behavior. Included are a tour of the Grand Guignol theater in Paris, a man who sticks long needles through his body, reindeer being castrated, and footage of lesbians and strippers.
An earthy, naturalistically erotic and blood-soaked tale of young Martta's ill-fated affair with Oula, a womanizing reindeer herdsman in the Finnish Lapland of the late 1940s. When the 19-year-old girl turns up pregnant, her alcoholic father is outraged and a series of tragic events follows
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.
A film about the monster of Lapland, Mr. Lordi, who after winning the Eurovision Song Contest loses everything, almost everything.
Hannes is a beer truck driver in Dortmund. His biggest dream is to win the first prize at the International Timetable Contest in Inari (Finland). When his new boss cancels his extra holidays to go there, Hans goes mad… On his journey to Finland by train, followed by the police, he meets lot of folks and the love of his life.