Movies: Esko Nikkari

After the coal mine he works at closes and his father commits suicide, a Finnish man leaves for the city to make a living but there, he is framed and imprisoned for various crimes....

Iris is a shy and dowdy young woman stuck in a dead-end job at a match factory, who dreams of finding love at the local dancehall. Finding herself pregnant after a one-night stand and abandoned by the father, Iris finally decides the time has come to...

Russia attacked Finland in late November 1939. This film tells the story of a Finnish platoon of reservists from the municipality of Kauhava in the province of Pohjanmaa/Ostrobothnia who leave their homes and go to war. The film focuses on the farmer...

Nikander, a rubbish collector and would-be entrepreneur, finds his plans for success dashed when his business associate dies. One evening, he meets Ilona, a down-on-her-luck cashier, in a local supermarket. Falteringly, a bond begins to develop betwe...

Arriving in Helsinki, a nameless man is beaten within an inch of his life by thugs, miraculously recovering only to find that he has completely lost his memory. Back on the streets, he attempts to begin again from zero, befriending a moody dog and be...

The ever-poker-faced Ilona loses her job as a restaurant hostess, as her tram driver husband, Lauri, also finds himself out of work. Together they must hit the streets of Helsinki, facing up to hardship and humiliation in their quest for survival, gu...

In Helsinki, an ex-law student turned slaughterhouse worker commits a senseless crime that catapults him into loneliness. Only a woman who accidentally arrived at the crime scene wants to follow him, but guilt and the tightening net of the police thr...

When Hamlet discovers his father’s deceased body, he finds himself pulled into a power struggle as his scheming uncle attempts to secure a monopoly on the Scandinavian rubber duck industry. Will Hamlet avenge his father? Will he become the king of ru...

A farmer's wife is seduced into running away from her stolid older husband by a city slicker, who enslaves her in a brothel....

Manne, Harri, and Ville Alfa are rootless twenty-somethings in search of purpose for their banal lives. After Manne steals a priceless painting from a group of petty criminals, Manne and Harri flee from the gangsters across Finland, while Ville goes ...

Two men, who both have tried to commit a suicide, decide to found a "Let's do it together"-suicide association to help the self-destructive people to succeed in their goal. Soon they have a bus load of candidates and together they start a bus tour in...

Based on a novel of the same name by the Finnish author, Antti Tuuri, this delicious late-80's comedy builds its dark humour on the stereotypical mentality of the northern part of Finland. While perhaps not as entertaining to a person unfamiliar with...

Pekka arrives back to his home village of Jerusalem to celebrate the last wedding of the village. His own marriage seems to have reached a dead end. The people of the village gather to prepare for the event, and the bitter spectrum of all human life,...

The life of Irwin Goodman, a Finnish singer....

A political drama set in the fictional country of Illyria between 1943 and 1945, the story is about the assassination of a leading politician. The country, an ally of Nazi Germany, is on the verge of being annexed to the Eastern Bloc. Kaurismäki's T...

Two young lovers, Anna and Martti, are split apart but are reunited many years later when their lives have changed considerably. Anna is a war widow; Martti a writer, is married, and has five children....

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A Finnish film version of Macbeth. Macbeth, the Thane of Glamis, receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders his king and takes the ...

Irma Auer (Satu Silvo) is a former call-girl, trying to distance herself from the past. In a séance she is told to be 'marked for death', and is afterward threatened by her former pimp and abandoned by her groom, as he learns about her past. Irma att...

Asko Mertanen is a waiter who is very interested in shooting. He gets fed up how the things are run in Finland, so he thinks that the best way to change them is to shoot the Finnish president....