Content from Making Movies

In 1988, 20-year-old Kirsi Marie Liimatainen travels from Finland to the GDR, to study Marxism-Leninism at the International Youth Academy. In summer of´89 the course ends and the students spread out over the world. Afew months later, the Berlin Wall falls. 24 years later Kirsi, sets out on a cinematic journey to Nicaragua, South Africa, Chile, Bolivia, Lebanon, Germany and Finland to meet up once more with her former fellow students. What remains of their dream of the liberation of the oppressed?

The Code is a Finnish-made documentary about Linux, featuring some of the most influential people of the free software movement.

An optician grapples with the Indonesian mass killings of 1965-1966, during which his older brother was exterminated.

The thorny relationship between a woman and her retired father worsens after he becomes romantically involved with the housekeeper she hires for him.

Turo is stuck in a small village and the best thing in his life is being the lead vocalist for the amateur metal band Impaled Rektum. He and his bandmates have practiced for 12 years without playing a single gig. The guys get a surprise visitor from Norway -- the promoter for a huge heavy metal music festival -- and decide it's now or never. They steal a van, a corpse, and even a new drummer to make their dreams a reality.

Two men, a Finn and a Belarusian live alone, on a lake's island.

Most of us think of death as something clear-cut, and that medical science has it neatly figured out. This feature documentary explodes such assumptions through its exploration of a phenomenon that blurs life and death to an unprecedented degree. In what Tibetan Buddhists call tukdam, advanced meditators die in a consciously controlled manner. Though dead according to our biomedical standards, they often stay sitting upright in meditation; remarkably, their bodies remain fresh and lifelike, without signs of decay for days, sometimes weeks after clinical death. Following ground-breaking scientific research into tukdam and taking us into intimate death stories of Tibetan meditators, the film juxtaposes scientific and Tibetan perspectives as it tries to unravel the mystery of tukdam.

Haunted by childhood traumas, Veera is trying to become more independent through live-action role-playing. As she guides herself and her mentally challenged brother through worlds of multiple roles and identities, witches and wizards, she finds the courage to face the demons of her own past and her abusive father’s legacy.

A Finnish documentary follows four young men who have one year to find new love in Helsinki.

Ivan, a Bulgarian taxi driver living at the Golden Sands tourist resort, is saving money in order to go back to Finland to meet his ex-wife and son, and to make amends for his past mistakes. But money is tight, and eventually Ivan will resort to extreme measures.

“Landscape with Many Moons“ is a drama about a middle-aged man who lives a seemingly ordinary life with his wife and children. The truth is, however, that their relationship has reached a dead end but they prefer the illusory decorations of living together to the free fall into emptiness. The man gallivants around between his previous and current relationships without knowing exactly what to do with them. Living on the edge starts to overburden his nervous system and as a result, actual reality and dream-like reality blend together and it becomes ever harder to distinguish between what is real and what is not.

While much of the world struggles to keep the planet going, a frighteningly large group of American fundamentalist Christians are working to promote the apocalypse. The evangelical movement is convinced that they will be saved when Jesus appears in the state of Israel on horseback and, with a sword raised to heaven, kills the infidels so that the blood reaches the horses’ bridles. Natural fires, corona, wars and crises are evidence that the time is nigh. But for the prophecies to be realized, the state of Israel has to grow stronger, so they provide huge financial support and are so far inside the White House that they help influence US foreign policy.

Low key documentary recording the daily life of an elderly blind man in Russia.

A retiring policeman gets caught up in between two younger men trying to kill each other. A modern borderline western taking place on both sides of the northern Finnish-Swedish border.

A refugee family in Sweden faces trauma after their youngest daughter falls into an unexplained coma when denied asylum. Parents struggle to find a cure, resilience tested amid difficult circumstances.

The world's hardest - and weirdest - heavy metal band Impaled Rektum is serving their sentence in Norway's nicest prison. They receive word that guitarist Lotvonen's parents' reindeer herding farm is about to come under the hammer. It will take a big gig and big money to save the farm. A breakout ensues and a trip to the world's biggest heavy festival, Wacken in northern Germany begins. The higher the target, the bigger the obstacles. This is what the boys will experience on their epic journey to the main stage of Wacken - every metalhead's heaven.

Innocence tells the story of children who resisted to be enlisted but capitulated. Their stories were never told as they died during their service. Through a narration based on their haunting diaries, the film depicts their inner turmoil. It interweaves first-hand military images, key moments from childhood until enlistment and home videos of the deceased soldiers whose stories are silenced and seen as a national threat.

NATO’s nuclear exercise, a 12-minute uninterrupted tracking shot, and the Finnish Eurovision Song Contest entries collide in the night of Helsinki in November 1983. The film presents various apocalyptic scenarios, and based on them, presents an alternative storyline from the perspective of the scenarios' targets, on a real scale, on the streets of nocturnal Helsinki. The difference between imaginary and real nuclear war is revealed to be frighteningly fragile.

17-year-old Sami has an accident which resulted in him reluctantly sent to closed psychiatric hospital. Sami refuses to speak or show his feelings, even when the nurse Taneli is trying everything in order to understand how the crash really happened. While Sami's and his roommate's Rude's eccentric friendships gradually increases, the truth of past events begin to unravel.

Little Wing tells the story of 12-year-old Varpu, who's quickly growing to adulthood, and about her mother, who doesn't want to grow up. Varpu lives with her mother and has never met her father. One night Varpu has enough of her riding buddies and her mother. She steals a car and drives up north in search of her father, of whom she only knows the name. But her father is not exactly what she had expected. Meeting him trigger something in Varpu and mother's life, making them realize their role in each other's lives, and in the world.