After losing his job and realizing that he is alone in the world, a businessman opts to voluntarily end his life. Lacking courage, he hires a contract killer to do the job. Then, while awaiting his demise, he meets a woman and promptly falls in love.
After the coal mine he works at closes and his father commits suicide, a Finnish man leaves for the city to make a living but there, he is framed and imprisoned for various crimes.
Nikander, a rubbish collector and would-be entrepreneur, finds his plans for success dashed when his business associate dies. One evening, he meets Ilona, a down-on-her-luck cashier, in a local supermarket. Falteringly, a bond begins to develop between them.
Iris is a shy and dowdy young woman stuck in a dead-end job at a match factory, who dreams of finding love at the local dancehall. Finding herself pregnant after a one-night stand and abandoned by the father, Iris finally decides the time has come to get even and she begins to plot her revenge.
Eco-terrorists attack a ship carrying toxic waste.
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.
In Helsinki, an ex-law student turned slaughterhouse worker commits a senseless crime that catapults him into loneliness. Only a woman who accidentally arrived at the crime scene wants to follow him, but guilt and the tightening net of the police throw a shadow over their desperate love affair.
A Finnish film version of Macbeth. Macbeth, the Thane of Glamis, receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders his king and takes the throne for himself.
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.
A week-long glimpse into the wretched existence of Ripa, a long-haired, hard-drinking lug. He is also a filmmaker-wannabee, whose last two projects were condemned for their sex and violence. A Parasite Deluxe, who barely recalls his previous night, Ripa cruises the bars and meets bank-teller Tiina.
Three young people, two boys and a girl, meet on a Friday evening in an urban post-disaster setting which has brought Helsinki to ruins. The boys' sole purpose of life is to play a Flip-Flop pinball machine.
A group of men all called Frank—except for one named Pekka—have had enough of life in their working-class neighborhood, so they set off for a better existence in the magical seaside district of Eira. But the way is long, and the group face many hurdles including stray dogs and defunct streetlights.
When Hamlet discovers his father’s deceased body, he finds himself pulled into a power struggle as his scheming uncle attempts to secure a monopoly on the Scandinavian rubber duck industry. Will Hamlet avenge his father? Will he become the king of rubber ducks? Does any of it really matter?
Antti "Zombie" Autiomaa does two things well: play the bass guitar and drink. After several months' sleeping on the streets of Istanbul, he returns to Helsinki where he's called into the army but discharged on mental health grounds after adding turpentine to the officers' soup. Zombie lives bleary-eyed in an apartment off his parents' house where his lonely, unemployed father suffers from heart disease. His girl-friend Marjo has taken up with a hairdresser but comes back to Zombie. His friend Harri hires him as a roadie for his band "Harry and the Mulefukkers" then gives him a chance as a bass player. He has his girl and he has a gig, but can Zombie put the bottle down?
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.
Juhani Haavisto returns to his childhood home from the seas and is confronted by his wheelchair-bound, demented father Eino and the traumas of sexual abuse and violence he experienced as a child.
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 lawyer pays a visit to Matti Ojanperä, a bum living under a bridge in the Helsinki harbour, to inform him that he is about to inherit an American aunt of his. The sum 1,000,000 Fmk would be his, if only he meets the qualifications set by his aunt. He must show that he is capable of 'living properly' and possessing a 'respectable occupation and a family he can support'. Otherwise the money would go to a foundation the chairman of which the lawyer himself happens to be!
Alex is a Finnish taxi driver in Berlin. One evening pits two men feel comfortable in his taxi with a briefcase full of money, but unfortunately for Alex's money stolen and a group of gangsters are at the nape of the two. Soon it comes to shooting, and when the two men being killed, is good advice costly for the beleaguered driver.
Young Alex Sammakko 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 Sammakko's, but who shares Alex's viewpoints and feelings. Not helping matters is a police department convinced that all Sammakkos are bad, and the family itself, pressuring Alex to follow in their murky footsteps.
