The best Antti Reini’s drama movies

Göran and Sven have been cleared for adoption and they have a possibility to adopt a swedish orphan, Patrik 1,5. But when Patrik arrives he turns out to be someone else, not the little boy they were expecting. A comma had been misplaced, and in comes a 15-year-old homophobic with a criminal past.

Koistinen is a sad sack, a man without affect or friends. He's a night-watchman in Helsinki with ideas of starting his own business, but nothing to go with those intentions. He sometimes talks a bit with a woman who runs a snack trailer near his work. Out of the blue, a young sophisticated blonde woman attaches herself to Koistinen. He thinks of her as his girlfriend, he takes her on her rounds.

A man arrives in Helsinki and gets beaten up so severely he develops amnesia. Unable to remember his name or anything from his past life, he cannot get a job or an apartment, so he starts living on the outskirts of the city and slowly starts putting his life back on track.

Tram driver Lauri loses his job. Shortly later, the restaurant where his wife Ilona works as a headwaitress is closed. Too proud, to receive money from the social welfare system, they hardly try to find new jobs. But they are completely unlucky and clumsy, one disaster is followed by the next. Finally, their courage, confidence, and their unbreakable love triumph over the fate.

Anna’s story takes place on Åland Island in 1666, during the beginning of the most widespread and systematic witch-hunts in Scandinavian history. In all, 16 women were convicted of being in league with the devil, and seven of them were executed. For Judge Psilander, who has mastered the newest witch theories of the time, the trials are meant to cleanse the island of superstition, to have science and common sense prevail. The main character, the intelligent and stubborn Anna, gets an intimate view of the events, having just started working as a maid in the judge’s house. To Anna’s misfortune, she falls intensely in love with her friend Rakel’s husband Elias, but his infatuation with her quickly fades. A hurt and jealous Anna decides to get revenge and falsely reports Rakel to Judge Psilander. It’s only when Rakel is arrested, and things get out of hand, that Anna realizes the gravity of her doings.

In a time of social change and unrest, war and poverty, a young working class woman, Maria, wins a camera in a lottery. The decision to keep it alters her whole life.

A drug addict becomes a mother and has to deal with responsibility and self-respect.

A programmer who's working with the secret EWS computer system at a military air force base is threaten by foreign agents, along with his family. His only chance of rescue seems to be the war veteran Haglund who is a leader of a special taskforce.

When his daughter goes missing in an apparent alien abduction, Gabriel's search takes him dangerously close to her strange group of so-called friends. But the further he goes inside their computer game and fantasy-obsessed world, the more he realises that he must confront his own difficult memories if he is to get his daughter back.

A sort of "Divorce Finnish Style," Mika Kaurismäki's rambunctious comedy, The House of Branching Love , recounts the breakup of a thirty-something professional couple - Juhani, a family therapist, and his wife, Tuula, a successful business trainer.

Mervi is a gay girl living in the hipster quarters of Helsinki. She has been together with Kata for a year, and now they are encouraged by the circumstances to come out from closet. When they do, Mervi realises that she is not the only one in her family with secrets – her parents have been living in an open-bisexual-swinger-relationship for 20 years. On the other hand Kata is pretty surprised that she might be living with a hetero girl that once was dating a neo-nazi. And the ex-boy friend cannot swallow that Mervi is now with a person both of wrong color, and sex. The real threat appears when Kata’s parents arrive from Berlin and the local skinhead chief finds out that a black muslim celebrity politician has arrived to town.

He refuses to accept charity and he does his morning exercise, he makes a living collecting cans and exists without a home, personal number or social control. In itself quite an achievement in today’s Sweden. The film is about this man getting one last chance as he unexpectedly receives a large amount of money. About his path to reconciliation with the people he thinks he let down thirty years ago. It’s a journey filled with temptation and ambivalence. But also one about an important friendship with a young hitchhiking girl.