Timo Salminen

The story of two lonely people who meet each other by chance in the Helsinki night and try to find the first, only, and ultimate love of their lives. Their path towards this honorable goal is clouded by the man's alcoholism, lost phone numbers, not knowing each other's names or addresses, and life's general tendency to place obstacles in the way of those seeking their happiness.

Lili has left everything behind to travel to the edge of the earth and accomplish her dream, fishing the Northern seas. She persuades Ian, the captain of a trawler by the name of Rebel, to give her a chance and let her join the crew. The only woman on board, they call her Sparrow. Hidden behind a frail appearance is a will of steel, and her courage and determination ultimately win over their respect. Adopted into this world of often unfortunate individuals, Lili will conquer her right to live differently, free. Debut film.

Benno and Allegra: he's over fifty, English, and drinks like a fish; she's twenty years younger, a travel blogger with lots of imagination. They both live off their lies and have no intention of stopping now. Next-door neighbors who had never met until the day he wound up on the wrong landing, and nothing would ever be the same. Sheer chance leads this odd couple on a flight towards lost or forgotten places, where their mutual support makes for self-discovery.

Daniel, a biologist studying the disappearance of fish, is haunted by paternity. It is by looking for a woman who could be the mother of his children that he will come across a strange fish and discover what he really lacks: love.

A young woman lavishes the last care on her mother's lifeless body. At his side, a woman watch, a babouhcka , as they say among the Russians. The young groped, the day before with a sure hand, wash this body, prepare it. They accompany him, rock him and console him by the last goodbye.

A restaurateur befriends a Syrian refugee who has recently arrived in Finland.

A teen-movie documentary, Swagger carries us in the midst of the astonishing minds of eleven teenagers from an underprivileged neighborhood.

Lazarus de Jesus is the adopted son of a wealthy lady from Lisbon, whom he calls Grandmother. It is she who introduces him to Godfather, a great businessman who takes him as his protégé, and Angelina, the woman Grandma wants him to marry. But Lazarus has other hidden interests, the most important of which is an obsessive fixation on female armpits. When he sees the violinist Maria Pia playing, Lazarus immediately falls in love and starts to live for her, which will precipitate an absolutely unpredictable ending.

A father and daughter journey from Denmark to an unknown desert that exists in a realm beyond the confines of civilization.

One winter evening, at an empty gas station, young country musician Sami meets beautiful Julia, who has run out of gas. Sami, who’s been living alone in his car since his ex kicked him out, invites Julia back to “his place” for the night.

Four voices and their visions of Guimarães, cradle city of the Portuguese nation and European Capital of Culture in 2012.

A day in the life of a lonely tavern man in an old Portuguese town.

Marcel Marx, a former bohemian and struggling author, has given up his literary ambitions and relocated to the port city Le Havre. He leads a simple life based around his wife Arletty, his favourite bar and his not too profitable profession as a shoeshiner. As Arletty suddenly becomes seriously ill, Marcel's path crosses with an underage illegal immigrant from Africa, who needs Marcel's help to hide from the police.

During an election campaign, a large sum of money goes missing at an Estonian politician's home party. The story involves some party guests who have serious money problems and are trying to come to terms with past mistakes. However, the self-confident politician strangely does not turn to the police, but begins to demand his justice by force.

Thomas, a father in his fifties, returns by chance to the town where he grew up. He collapses and wakes up forty years earlier in the body of his teenage self. Thrown back into his past, Thomas will not only have to re-live his first love, but also try to understand the reasons for his father’s mysterious departure. Can you change the past by living it again?

Self-taught philosopher Konsta Pylkkänen guides a group of researchers through Finland's Kainuu wilderness in the hopes of having a "sinistä ajatusta", idea out of the blue. While firing upon a hybrid of the hazel grouse and the western capercaillie, kinds of birds, he indeed makes a scientific discovery.

Maria is young and beautiful. Her life resembles a fairy tale, in which the wishes come true if by magic. She has a smart, loving husband. And all that can be bought for money. Maria wants a child but could not bear it. She lives, but does not feel life. She is very unhappy.

恋人も友人もいない夜警員コイスティネンは、カフェで声を掛けてきた美しい女ミルヤに恋をする。しかし彼女はマフィアが送り込んだ情婦だった。強盗の罪を擦りつけられたコイスティネンは逮捕され、1年間の服役を言い渡されてしまう。

Short documentary about life in a little town called Bico in the northern Portugal.

A short film by Aki Kaurismäki. It was shot in 2001 as a test before filming The Man Without a Past, featuring much of the same cast. Markku Peltola plays a man who leaves his company and boards a train to Moscow with the woman he is going to marry.

　映画史に燦然と輝く巨匠監督15人が“時間”をテーマに競作した豪華な短編集。10分という厳密な時間制限と予算だけが決められ、それ以外は各監督の自由にすべてが委ねられたこの企画は、２本のコンピレーション・フィルムに結実。本作はそのうちの１本。もう１本のタイトルは「１０ミニッツ・オールダー イデアの森」。 　７人の映画監督が“結婚・誕生・進化・孤独・死・運・郷愁”という誰にでもいつかは訪れる出来事を題材に、人生の意味を10分間の一場面に凝縮して描く。収録されている作品は、アキ・カウリスマキの「結婚は１０分で決める」、ヴィクトル・エリセの「ライフライン」、ヴェルナー・ヘルツォークの「失われた一万年」、ジム・ジャームッシュの「女優のブレイクタイム」、ヴィム・ヴェンダースの「トローナからの１２マイル」、スパイク・リーの「ゴアＶＳブッシュ」、チェン・カイコーの「夢幻百花」の全７編。

ある日列車に揺られ、夜のヘルシンキに流れ着いた一人の男。公園のベンチで夜明けを待っていた彼は突然暴漢に襲われ、瀕死の重傷を負う。男は病院で奇跡的に意識を取り戻すが、過去の記憶を全て失っていた。身分証もなく、自分の名前すらも分からない有様。しかし、幸運にもそんな彼にコンテナで暮らす一家が手を差し伸べ、男は彼らと共に穏やかな生活を送り始める。そして救世軍からスープが振る舞われる金曜日。男はコンテナの主人に連れられ支給場所へとやって来る。そこで男は救世軍の女性イルマと運命的な出会いを果たすのだった…。

The mechanic Jack tries to get rid of his criminal background.

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

不況のため共に職を失ってしまった、レストランの給仕長イロナと電車の運転手ラウリの夫婦。二人は次の職が見つからず苦しむが、やがてイロナがレストランを営むという目標を見い出し、共に手を取り合って夢の実現に励む。

A performance by Markus Allan.

Bad Trip, a biker who has been freshly inducted into a gang, flees from them after stealing one of their bikes.

A 57 minute documentary of a Helsinki concert featuring the Leningrad Cowboys and the Alexandrov Red Army Choir and Ballet, who collaborate on a number of US Rock songs sung in English (like "Sweet Home, Alabama") as well as more traditional Russian songs like the "Volga Boatman".

After years of fame and misfortune in Mexico, the members of the Leningrad Cowboys decide to return to their native village. Their former manager Vladimir, who now calls himself Moses lead them on their way home.

This droll tale of longing and awkward romance follows two misfits - a coffee addict and a vodka-soaked mechanic - as they hit the road in their Soviet-built Volga. Along the way they manage to pick up two women, the Estonian Tatjana and the buxom Russian Klavdia, despite sharing no common language and being completely clueless as to what to do with them next.

Esa is a small time crook who has been precisely released from prison. He starts to make money by mugging people. One day psychiatrist Lindström rings Esa's doorbell. He has a very strange request: he wants Esa to maltreat him. Esa accepts this request, but he is not aware of Lindström's bad intentions.

Life of a member of the rock band Leningrad Cowboys from birth to moving away from home.

Three penniless artists become friends in modern-day Paris: Rodolfo, an Albanian painter with no visa, Marcel, a playwright and magazine editor with no publisher, and Schaunard, a post-modernist composer of execrable noise.

A stranger arrives in Parisian night café where the Leningrad Cowboys are drinking.

Widowed and broke Finnish businessman Kari takes his two teenage daughters with him to Brazil. A bush pilot introduces him to the idea of gold mining in the jungle, but a beautiful and educated local woman warns him about the possible consequences to the rain forest. Kari has mixed feelings about the project, until an accident puts him in the care of a local Indian tribe.

長年勤めた職場を追われ、家族も恋人もなく、人生に絶望したアンリは、自殺を試みるもうまくいかず、思い余ってプロの殺し屋“コントラクト・キラー”に自分の殺しを依頼する。が、その直後、アンリは花売り娘のマーガレットと恋に落ちてしまい……。

A young woman with nothing to look forward to in life discovers that she has been impregnated by a man who wants nothing to do with it.

The Leningrad Cowboys, a group of Siberian musicians, and their manager, travel to America seeking fame and fortune. As they cross the country, trying to get to a wedding in Mexico, they are followed by the village idiot, who wishes to join the band.

Taisto Kasurinen is a Finnish coal miner whose father has just committed suicide and who is framed for a crime he did not commit. In jail, he starts to dream about leaving the country and starting a new life. He escapes from prison but things don't go as planned...

A bizarre black-and-white film noir reworking of Shakespeare's 'Hamlet'.

A member of the rock band Leningrad Cowboys escapes from prison and starts looking for his girlfriend.

An episode in the life of Nikander, a garbage man, involving the death of a co-worker, an affair and much more.

Not to be confused with any of the sequels to Sylvester Stallone's classic Oscar-winning Rocky, this short film from Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki is actually meant as a parody of the late Cold War-era Rocky IV, which saw Stallone's character taking on a juiced-up Russian fighter played by Dolph Lundgren. In this 1986 send-up, Rock'y, played by Silu Seppala, goes head to head with Soviet Igor (Sakari Kuosmanen) and loses.

Giancarlo Rosso, a professional assassin from Sicily, is sent to Finland to kill a very specific target. When he reaches the country, he discovers that the target is one of his past loves.

Calamari Union is an allegorical movie that tells the story of sixteen men all of whom are called Frank (inspired by Frank Armoton) apart from a single confrere, Pekka. Collectively the Franks and Pekka are unhappy with the perceived oppression they face in their district of Helsinki, Kallio, and decide to move to another, Eira, imagining it to be an unspoiled place where people can live lives of dignity. The journey is an ironic one given that both districts are not so far apart. In this spirit, their journey across the city takes on epic proportions with each of the travellers gradually falling by the wayside due to such travails as marriage, work, and death. In its entirety the film is a wry discussion of humanity within a system that regards humans as subservient components.

Young Alex Sammako has seen his brothers defy the law in a series of deeds that first land them in jail, and then, after they escape and return to their rural home, land them back in the lap of their locally notorious family. Alex wants nothing to do with them. He is in love with Mirja, whose family is not that different from the Sammakos, but who shares Alex's viewpoints and feelings. Not helping matters is a police department convinced that all Sammakos are bad, and the family itself, pressuring Alex to follow in their murky footsteps.

An adaptation of Dostoyevsky's novel, updated to present-day Helsinki. Slaughterhouse worker Rahikainen murders a man, and is forced to live with the consequences of his actions...

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 to Paris. On the road they meet Veera, an old girlfriend of Harri's, and try to avoid the gangsters in pursuit.

A documentary film about a tour of three Finnish rock bands around Saimaa lake system in a steam boat in 1981. The bands (Juice Leskinen Slam, Eppu Normaali and Hassisen Kone) are shown playing songs in their gigs and, in between, the members give intimate interviews or just act plain silly and have a good time.

In 1870, four different stories happen in four different places in the world.