Matti Pellonpää

The recession hits a couple in Helsinki. Tram driver Lauri loses his job. Shortly later, the restaurant where his wife Ilona works as a head waitress is closed. Too proud to receive money from the social welfare system, they strive to find new jobs. But they are completely unlucky and clumsy, one disaster is followed by the next. —Frank Wallner <wallnerf@informatik.tu-muenchen.de>

Lugubrious Finns Valto and Reino take to the road in search of coffee and vodka, but are interrupted by the Russian Klaudia and Estonian Tatiana, clearly interested in them. Are there chances of getting a response though language barrier? Lugubrious Finns Valto and Reino take to the road in search of coffee and vodka, without which their lives are not worth living. But their reveries are interrupted by the arrival of garrulous Russian Klaudia and Estonian Tatiana - who are clearly interested in the two men, despite the language barrier. But what are the chances of getting a response from men who prefer staring at vodka bottles to talking?

Three struggling artists try to make passable livings in Paris despite setbacks and tragedies. 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. Rodolfo falls in love with Mimi, a barmaid. The day he asks her to move in with him, he is deported. Six months later, he sneaks back to Paris, and Mimi leaves her new boyfriend to be with him. Conflicts arise, especially around their poverty, and soon Mimi and Rodolfo separate, as do Marcel and his Musette. The three men scrape together a meal to celebrate All Saints' Day, and Mimi arrives, ill. Can her friends bring her back to health? Can love rekindle? —<jhailey@hotmail.com>

The story concerns the exploits of an extremely inept but dedicated troupe of accordian musicians, ''The Leningrad Cowboys''. These eight Finnish lads head off for New York. There they encounter yet another wise guy, who sends them off to Mexico by car to play at his cousin's wedding. Along the way, they get bookings wherever they can, learn American music styles, and get along fabulously.

A Finnish man goes to the city to find a job after the mine where he worked is closed and his father commits suicide. The movie tells the story of Taisto Kasurinen, 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... —Harald Mayr <marvin@bike.augusta.de> Taisto Kasurinen is a miner in a remote Finnish town. After the mine where he works shuts down permanently, he is given an unusual send-off by his father as he heads toward Helsinki to start a new life. That send off includes his father giving him his broken down, older model convertible whose top is now permanently in the down position. Taisto has little money in his pockets and needs to work odd jobs along the way to survive. On his way to Helsinki and once in Helsinki, Taisto gets into one misadventure after another. But the one bright spot for him in Helsinki is meeting single mother Irmeli Pihlaja, who works several jobs in order to pay for the modest items in her possession she has paid for in installments. They quickly fall for each other and plan to get married, that plan which hits a snag when an incident befalls Taisto. Although marrying Irmeli is foremost on his mind, he will have to decide how far he will go to achieve that end goal, and what that end goal will look like for him, Irmeli and her adolescent son. —Huggo After Taisto Kasurinen loses his job when the mine he worked in closes down and then loses his father to suicide, he decides to seek his fortune elsewhere. He heads to the big city in an old convertible - he can't get the top up - but finds that life is not easy. Not long after leaving he is mugged and loses all of his cash. He finds odd jobs but has trouble getting a regular work. He does meet Irmeli who has a young son but soon finds himself in jail after attacking one of the muggers who stole his money. There, he and his cell-mate plan a breakout with the hope of starting anew in a foreign country. As is the case with his life so far, things don't go as planned. —garykmcd

An episode in the life of Nikander, a garbage man, involving the death of a coworker, a love affair and much more. Only connect. In gray, class-conscious Helsinki, Nikander is a stoic, solitary garbage man. Cigarettes, coffee, bingo games, and English lessons border his circumscribed life. There are few words, no smiles, and no laughter. Violence and the threat of violence seem close at hand. Ilona, a supermarket clerk who frequently loses her job, bandages Nikander's hand one evening; later he gets her out of a jam, and they begin an on-again off-again relationship. "Why do I keep losing?," Nikander asks his co-worker, Melartin, a man Nikander met in jail and helped get a job. Can he break his losing streak? —<jhailey@hotmail.com>

A slaughterhouse worker and former law student, takes vengeance on the man who killed his fiancée in a hit and run accident. An adaptation of Dostoyevsky's novel, set in modern Helsinki. Slaughterhouse worker Rahikainen murders a man, and is forced to live with the consequences of his actions. —Michael Brooke <michael@everyman.demon.co.uk>