Esko Nikkari

A political drama set in the fictional country of Illyria between 1943 and 1945, the story is about the assassination of a leading politician. The country, an ally of Nazi Germany, is on the verge of being annexed to the Eastern Bloc. Kaurismäki's TV adaptation of Jean-Paul Sartre's play Les Mains Sales (Dirty Hands) tells the story of Hugo (Matti Pellonpää) who has just been released from prison. Before going to prison, he has worked as a journalist at his party's newspaper. This timid journalist, who uses the pseudonym Raskolnikov, wants to advance in his career and gets his chance when Hoederer (Sulevi Peltola), the leader of the party, has to be eliminated.

The story of a young poet who became a symbol for Finnish optimism and was subsequently forced underground during Tsar Nicholas II's oppressive dictatorship.

A comedy of a Finnish man who falls in love, gets tangled deeper into a circle of lies and finds out that he has suddenly changed his name, nationality and skin colour for the sake of love.

Arriving in Helsinki, a nameless man is beaten within an inch of his life by thugs, miraculously recovering only to find that he has completely lost his memory. Back on the streets, he attempts to begin again from zero, befriending a moody dog and becoming besotted with a Salvation Army volunteer.

The life of Irwin Goodman, a Finnish singer.

Businessman Erkki Hakala returns to Ostrobothnia after years in Florida and buys a metal workshop in Jalasjärvi from the unknown Partanen brothers with his business partner Taisto Matsomppi. Erkki misses his wife Kaisu, who back in the day stayed in Finland, and his child, but will the man be forgiven for years of absence?

Two men, who both have tried to commit a suicide, decide to found a "Let's do it together"-suicide association to help the self-destructive people to succeed in their goal. Soon they have a bus load of candidates and together they start a bus tour in order to find a suitable place for the mass suicide.

In a religious rural community in the 1950s, Ritva, a young woman has kept her pregnancy a secret. Helped by her sister, she gives birth but soon abandons the baby. The next day the infant is brought to the hospital where Ritva works. Troubled with shame, Ritva finds consolation from a dying priest.

In a comedy set in Rovaniemi, the parish’s housekeeper Kristiina Pahka falls in love with Marsipaani Räikkonen, even though he knows that the man is a petty criminal. Under the leadership of hard-hitting Inspector Rautapää, the city’s police force will have to investigate many kinds of crimes, of which Marsipaani’s close friends know one or another.

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