The best Juhani Niemelä’s movies

A restaurateur befriends a Syrian refugee who has recently arrived in Finland.

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.

Inkeri, 75, has hit her husband on the head with a solid iron frying pan and is planning to bury him in their garden. Before facing the rest of her life in prison, there may yet be a moment left to really live. Inkeri makes her sisters Sylvi and Raili join her on a trip to the Koli National Park. Will Inkeri find in her that free young woman who desired a feminist revolution in the 70s?

Directed by Heikki Kujanpää, Falling Angels (2008) is based on a play of the same name by Kujanpää, Sami Parkkinen and Heikki Huttu-Hiltunen and Aila Meriluoto's book about his colleague and spouse, the poet Lauri Viita. The film tells the stormy love story of Viita (Tommi Korpela) and Meriluoto (Elina Knihtilä) from the perspective of their imaginary daughter Helena (Elena Leeve).

The Singer is a film about the all-time favourite singer in Finland, Olavi Virta. A man who rose from poverty all the way to the top and became an artist who was dearly loved by the Finnish people. A man who loved beautiful women and was loved by beautiful women. A man who enjoyed speed, American cars, applause and alcohol and who finally lost everything but his unique voice.

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.

Self-taught philosopher Konsta Pylkkänen guides a group of researchers through Finland's Kainuu wilderness in the hopes of having a "sinistä ajatusta", idea out of the blue. While firing upon a hybrid of the hazel grouse and the western capercaillie, kinds of birds, he indeed makes a scientific discovery.

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?