Finlandia – Aki Kaurismäki and Friends

“FINLANDIA – A word that sounds like a melody. A melody that evokes images of forests, lakes, endless landscapes – like, by the way, Marko Röhr’s Nature Symphony (Luontosinfonia). However, Finnish cinema by no means only reproduces common images about the country and its people in the far north. It also shows dreary suburbs, desolate apartments and lonely, taciturn people who then unexpectedly meet the love of their lives, as in Aki Kaurismäki’ s Falling Leaves. For many, Kaurismäki stands for contemporary Finnish cinema par excellence. Films whose heroes are often so-called ordinary people, loners, outsiders that deal with existential conflicts such as power/powerlessness, violence/revenge, isolation/love; big topics. This makes Kaurismäki a great of world cinema. FINLANDIA shows Kaurismäki’s complete oeuvre spanning four decades. But FINLANDIA goes further, showing current documentaries and feature films, but also silent films and classic sound films from the 1930s and 60s: a unique festival of Finnish cinema in terms of selection and quantity, something of it’s kind Berlin has never seen before. …”