Synopsis

Set in the lush days of a Finnish summer, Mika Kaurismaki’s Long Good Thursday is a gentle comedy of growing older and of accepting the never-ending possibility of finding joy. Finnish comedy star Heikki Kinnunen plays an aging farmer intent on finishing his life in the home he shared with his late wife. Much to his surprise, he finds himself smitten with a free-spirited artist (the ever alluring Jaana Saarinen) intent on using him as a model for her photography. Similar in tone to Hannes Holm’s A Man Called Ove, Long Good Thursday perfectly balances deadpan humor with simple yet profound observations about our shared journey of aging.

Synopsis

In this touching deadpan comedy, a welder, who finds himself in Helsinki and experiencing total amnesia, sets out to rebuild his life with a ragtag group of outsiders.

Synopsis

Visionary stop-motion animation director Adam Elliot returns to the Festival (Mary and Max, 2009) with a film eight years in the making. As a girl whose young life is troubled by misfortune, Grace (voiced by Sarah Snook) seeks comfort in her loving twin brother Gilbert and her pet snails. But when the siblings are forcibly separated after the death of their father and placed in foster homes at opposite ends of  Australia, Grace’s loneliness causes her to withdraw into her shell — much like her beloved pet snails.

Years pass and her sorrow grows, until one day she strikes up an odd friendship with Pinky (Jacki Weaver), an eccentric older woman with a glowing outlook on life and kindness to spare. At once gloomy, affecting, and hopeful, Memoir of a Snail is a beautiful testament to the power of friendship and resilience in the face of adversity.

Synopsis

Jérémie returns to his sleepy hometown of Saint-Martial in the south of France to attend the funeral of his former boss, the village baker. Afterwards, he decides to stay for a few days with Martine, the baker’s widow. His continued presence in town unsettles the locals, and a threatening neighbor starts to question Jérémie’s intentions. When a mysterious disappearance disturbs the community, a cloud of suspicion begins to form.

Packed with suspense and intrigue, director Alain Guiraudie (Stranger by the Lake, 2013, Staying Vertical, 2016) returns to the Festival with this misty masterwork. Cloaked in an aura of uncertainty, the film’s tense, winding plot expertly suggests hidden meanings and secret motivations. Featuring a stunning earth-toned visual palette and an unforgettable cast of characters (including a priest with suspicious intentions), Misericordia is an incisive, twist-filled mystery.

Synopsis

In an absurd concatenation of events, single mother Niina (Oona Airola) begins working as an archivist at a local paper. She is drawn inexorably into an investigation when a Soviet nuclear missile crashes near her Lapland town. International reporters and handsome strangers descend on the area, and Niina strikes up a relationship with Kai, a fighter pilot who knows a thing or two about the missile.

When her mother says that Finland is a country troubled by a sense of inferiority and unworthiness, Niina knows the feeling. Mistreated by her ex-husband, judged by her family, and dismissed by all with whom she comes in contact, this single mother has never learned to set boundaries. And Miia Tervo’s The Missile knows something about boundaries — specifically, how to shatter them. Based on an actual incident in 1984, The Missile constantly blurs the generic lines between political thriller, newspaper drama, domestic melodrama, and romantic comedy. Confidently walking this tightrope, writer/director Tervo delivers a moving essay on the importance of  self-worth and the extraordinary power of simply saying “no.”