Sanna Salmenkallio

Once Upon a Time in a Forest is a film about brave young people who are defending one of the last coniferous forest areas in Europe. It is a morality play and a love story of a younger generation whose main object of love is the Finnish forest. This cinematic documentary explores environmental feelings and witnesses how the 22-year old protagonist Ida grows up to be the leader of the new Forest Movement.

People living in times of global crises, trying to envision how the future is 50 years from now.

A film about Maija Isola, the designer of Finland’s most beloved fabrics. Her bold designs, which include classics like Unikko, Kivet, Kaivo and Melooni, were essential in creating Marimekko’s lifestyle universe. The film shows the secrets to the success of Maija Isola’s fabrics, the values at the heart of Isola’s globetrotter lifestyle, and the legacy she left us. The film is narrated by Maija Isola, as well as her daughter Kristina Isola. It takes us close to Maija as a person, artist, thinker and visionary through her letters. We also hear Armi Ratia’s thoughts on Isola both as an employee and as a friend.

This captivating exploration of Alvar Aalto, the defining figure in Scandic design and one of Europe's greatest modern architects, focuses on his remarkable and loving partnership with wife, Aino. Theirs was a profoundly humanist vision that put people at the centre of design, and ranged from work in furniture design through to huge architectural projects. They mixed with, and influenced, major figures of modernist art and design including Le Corbusier, Gropius, Moholy-Nagy, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Come on a cinematic tour of their iconic buildings all over the world, from a library in Russia, a student dormitory at MIT, an art collector's private house near Paris, to a pavilion in Venice. Narrated by experts in the field and featuring never before seen archive footage, Aalto tells the love story of an extraordinary couple with a great passion for human scale architecture.

This film tells the story of David Rothenberg’s efforts to gather together an international band of musicians to cross the species line and make music live with nightingales. Because of its spacious parks and the large number of enthusiastically singing birds, Berlin is the best city to make music with nightingales. Almost everything one plays to a nightingale will encourage him to sing more. These encounters becomes a direct window into the unknown, a touch of communication with a being with whom we cannot speak. The play of pure tones jarring against click and buzz, it all becomes not a code but a groove, an amphitheater of rhythms in which we strive to find a place.

A celebrated violin player, Karin, has to end her stellar career after a car accident makes her fingers stop working their magic. She starts teaching students who are twenty years younger than her, only to find herself falling in love with Antti, one of her students. They are not an easy match, both being passionate about the music and overly ambitious about their careers.

A celebrated violin player, Karin, has to end her stellar career after a car accident makes her fingers stop working their magic. She starts teaching students who are twenty years younger than her, only to find herself falling in love with Antti, one of her students. They are not an easy match, both being passionate about the music and overly ambitious about their careers.

The film in its entirety is set in the forest: the protagonists sleep under spruce trees, make art, hunt with their dogs, hold techno raves in the summer night and earn their living as forest owners. As the film progresses, one gains a more versatile view of the forest as a biological organism, a spiritual retreat for humans, a source of inspiration and as a complete living environment supporting us all.

A Roma beggar on his knees raises many extreme emotions: guilt, rage, sympathy and frustration. Most people just walk on by, but there is always someone willing to help. In this film, the director follows the confrontations between the Roma beggars from Romania and Finnish people, and is forced to question, over and over again, her own ideas about helping.

An exploration between faith and football, following three fans of the legendary Club Atlético "Boca" Juniors in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Hernán is an intellectual intoxicated by a love for Boca he cannot shake off, torn between reason and his passion for Boca. Pablo is a working class man that believes that the former Boca player Diego Maradona is a God. La Tía (The Auntie) is an old eccentric, she considers Boca players her sons. Football is God is a film about football, faith, passion and the need for being part of something bigger than one self.

Police trainee Riikka finds there is something not even a bullet proof vest can protect her from - her own emotions.

A searing examination of the unrelenting Chechen conflict, observed through the prisms of a Russian military boys academy, a war-torn town and a children's refugee camp.