Kari Kankaanpää

Movies

Kaukainen planeetta
Production Design
The last part of Juho Kuosmanen's silent film trilogy.
The Worst Idea Ever
Production Design
The lifelong friendship between the two game developers begins to fray as one longs for nostalgia of her youth, and the other for marriage and a life abroad. When old grudges surface at a LARP-themed bachelorette party, it's time to find out who's living whose dream.
Erik Stoneheart
Art Direction
Erik is convinced he has a stone for a heart. That’s why he doesn’t mind that his parents have no time for him, or that he is bullied at school, or that he has no real friends. When his family moves to a villa they inherited, he is confronted by Maria whom Erik's parents want to kick out along with her father. Maria refuses to move and promises to make Erik's life a living hell. As a last attempt to defeat Erik, Maria goes to look for her mother who disappeared two years ago. Together they end up on a fantastical journey to the In-Between-World and Erik learns how hard it really is to wear a heart of stone.
Erik Stoneheart
Production Design
Erik is convinced he has a stone for a heart. That’s why he doesn’t mind that his parents have no time for him, or that he is bullied at school, or that he has no real friends. When his family moves to a villa they inherited, he is confronted by Maria whom Erik's parents want to kick out along with her father. Maria refuses to move and promises to make Erik's life a living hell. As a last attempt to defeat Erik, Maria goes to look for her mother who disappeared two years ago. Together they end up on a fantastical journey to the In-Between-World and Erik learns how hard it really is to wear a heart of stone.
Kikka!
Production Design
Cosmetics saleswoman Kirsi Viilonen dreams of a career as a star artist. When Kirsi meets DJ and radio journalist Paula, she decides to give in completely to her dream of becoming a singer. Despite the scorn of the male-dominated music world, Paula recognizes the star in Kirsi and together they get her a recording contract. Kikka's career takes off when her nipple is accidentally flashed on a TV show. Kikka immediately becomes a national celebrity and one of Finland's best-selling female artists.
Compartment No. 6
Production Design
A young Finnish woman escapes an enigmatic love affair in Moscow by boarding a train to the arctic port of Murmansk. Forced to share the long ride and a tiny sleeping car with a larger than life Russian miner, the unexpected encounter leads the occupants of Compartment No. 6 to face major truths about human connection.
Any Day Now
Production Design
Bahman, Mahtab, Ramin and Donya Mehdipour are enjoying a perfect summer in a small Finnish town. Their routines are fractured by a negative decision on their application for asylum by the Finnish Immigration Service. But life must go on and the 13-year-old Ramin is about to enter an entirely new school, junior high. The Mehdipours use their last chance to appeal but continue their everyday lives, fuelled by their exceptionally positive outlook and attitude.
Kristal
Production Design
The film is about a show dancer, Kristal, 40+ years, blond hair woman, who with a Lada car goes around small pubs and entertains people. First she seems a bit ridiculous, self-sufficient and naive, a potential victim, an circus animal, but she comes out as something else. Kristal is a weird saint, who takes to bear all the hate, despair, lust and confusion around her and through that gives people a momentary relief.
Hardballer
Production Design
HARDBALLER is an action comedy of a man, who can’t admit his doubts and fears about his impending marriage, until he gets thrown into a situation of life and death during his bachelor party gone horribly wrong.
Aurora
Production Design
One night at a hot-dog stand in Finnish Lapland, a commitment-phobic party animal, Aurora, meets Iranian Darian. Darian suddenly asks her to marry him. Darian needs to marry a Finnish woman to get an asylum for himself and his daughter. Aurora turns him down, as she is busy working as a nail technician and plans to move to Norway, away from her shit life. However, after meeting his sweet daughter, Aurora agrees to help him. As Aurora introduces numerous women to Darian, the two of them grow close. When the perfect wife candidate comes along, Darian and Aurora are faced with a difficult choice: pretend to be happy or to finally stop running.
It Came from the Desert
Production Design
New Mexico, present day. Brian and Lukas are off to the desert to join a kegger party and to celebrate Lukas’ victory in a motocross competition. His winning prize includes meeting The Deathinator, the biggest action star in the world. The party gets started under the hot desert sun, but Brian isn’t in the mood, so he wanders off and is soon joined by his friend, Lukas. They discover something strange in the desert which leads them into a secret military laboratory, where they discover the disturbing truth of what the government has been doing. Secret experiments on ants and spiders using DNA found in a meteorite which fell to Earth in 1951 has given birth to mutated giant ants which have overrun the facility. Now, it's up to Brian and Lukas to save the world from a giant ant invasion!
Thick Lashes of Lauri Mäntyvaara
Production Design
There's this hot ice-hockey guy called Lauri Mäntyvaara. Satu promises she'll do her best, so that her best friend Heidi will get him. You'd think that the picturesque Finnish Archipelago would be the perfect place to discover your first love (and get rid of your virginity), but it will not be easy, if a cynical protein-shake-slurping ice hockey team thinks the target of your desire should focus only on the European Championship, and the only places you can escape to are the pretentious summer wedding parties - or bitter divorce parties.
Tatu and Patu: An Oddsville Christmas
Production Design
A young girl and her two friends from the exceptionally strange land of Oddsville make plans to celebrate Christmas together, but when she is late to pick them up from the train station, the pair wander out on their own leading to a delightful series of hilarious mishaps, inventions, and flights of fancy - until they find their little friend, who finally shows them the true meaning of Christmas.
The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki
Production Design
Summer 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.
The Midwife
Production Design
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.
Lovemilla
Production Design
Aimo and Milla are living together at Milla's alcoholics-turned-zombies parents' place. They save money to move out of the house. Due to his lack of self confidence, Aimo wastes their savings to turbo-boost his muscles. As conventional body building is not quite satisfactory, Aimo tunes himself up into a robot. Milla doesn't like the new Aimo-Robot and leaves him. Aimo´s heartache leads him to extreme measures as he also changes his heart into a metal one, one that doesn't hurt. Milla decides to steal Aimo heart: after all, a woman needs to have a man´s heart. Lovemilla is an anarchistic comedy trip, a comedy about love, a story about love, robots and bodybuilding.
Mistaken
Production Design
Nick Mayers, a music icon, comes to believe that he is the only real person around whom the world revolves. When Nick announces this belief and refuses to perform on the night of a big concert, he sees how quickly his world turns against him. His theory is put to a test as he tries to escape his world.
Hella W
Set Designer
The life of a heroine. The life and work of Hella Wuolijoki. A poet, spy and millionaire, she turned into an internationally acclaimed businesswoman, politician and playwright, who collaborated with Europe's leading writers such as Bertolt Brecht and Maxim Gorky, but faced the harshness of a changing world as the Finnish, Soviet and British secret services focus on her life, family and work.
A Rare Grand Alignment
Production Design
Directed by Cinqué Lee. Plot currently unknown.