FINLANDIA

Aki Kaurismäki & Friends

FILME & FREE SAUNA:

Jeder der mit einem FINLANDIA Filmticket beim Einlass kommt, bekommt Sie/er einen Armband mit FINLANDIA. Damit darf Sie/er einen Tag in die Sauna. Nach dem Film oder an einem anderen Tag. Aber nur 1 X nutzbar bitte.

ENGL.

Everyone who comes with a FINLANDIA film ticket at the entrance will receive a wristband with FINLANDIA. This entitles him/her to one day in the sauna. After the film or on another day. But only 1 X use please.

 

FINLANDIA – Festival - Recommendations for the Final Days
There is a huge rush at Babylon's Festival of Finnish Cinema – especially for Aki Kaurismäki's films, but also for documentaries such as Cinema Laika (Friday, 6:15 pm) about Kaurismäki's cinema project in the Finnish Forest, where he uses his own hands to set up a cinema for the inhabitants of Karkkila in a disused foundry – as a lively cultural and communication place.

A masterpiece of contemporary Finnish cinema is Stormskärs Maja (Thursday, 20:00 and Saturday, 14:15) about the hard life of a young woman in Finland in the 19th century. A ravishing cinematic epic in German premiere!

Golden Globe's nominated Leading Actress Alma Pöysti was the special guest of festival.

You can see her HERE: Equally virtuosically staged: Four little adults [OmeU](Thursday, 9:45 pm). The drama about the attempt at a marriage for four shows the ravishingly changeable Alma Pösty in the leading role of a Finnish member of parliament, whose husband cheats on her with a young woman, whereupon she also takes a lover and thus confronts the family with new challenges.

The fate of a Finnish tango violinist in Paris is shown in The Broad Way/Der einfache Weg (Friday, 20:00). The film, still shot silently and subsequently set to music, is reminiscent of the triumphal procession of Finnish dance music through the ballrooms of the world in the 1920s.

Aki Kaurismäki'  s Total Balalaika Show (Sat. 15:15) about a joint concert of the Leningrad Cowboys with choir and ballet of the legendary Russian Alexandrov Ensemble from 1993 shows a breathtaking musical spectacle. A festival of international understanding – those were the days!  

Finnish sauna culture can currently be experienced live every evening from 5-10 p.m. in front of the Babylon. Anyone who buys a cinema ticket for FINLANDIA can use one of the three saunas free of charge. If you want to learn more about Finnish sauna culture and the philosophy of its users, you can do so one last time in Steam of Life/Was Männer sonst nicht zeigen (Saturday, 2:15pm).

Otherwise, the weekend is once again all about Aki Kaurismäki's great films, which have not gathered any dust even decades after their creation, i.e. are cinema classics.

His modern Shakespeare adaptation Hamlet Goes Business/Hamlet macht Geschäfte (Saturday, 6:15 p.m.). Or his ingenious I Hired a Contract Killer/Vertrag mit meinem Killer (Saturday, 20:00), by the way the remake of "The Man Who Seeks His Murderer"/  (1931) based on a screenplay by Billy Wilder.

Or his elegiac Paris homage The Bohémian Life/Das Leben der Bohème(Saturday, 9:15 p.m.).
Kaurismäki's short films and music videos reveal his preference for reduction, his concentration on the essentials.

They are not just cinematic finger exercises, but sparkling gems Kurzfilme/Musik-Videos von Aki Kaurismäki (Sunday, 4:45 p.m.).

Children will also get their money's worth at FINLANDIA: The Snow Queen Die Schneekönigin  (Sunday, 2:15 pm) is the masterful film adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's classic fairy tale.

Juha Lehtola's current comedy The Human Side/Die menschliche Seite(Sunday, 7:30 p.m.) about a comprehensible little white lies and their surprising expiration date proves that Finland is by no means only a country of melanchic filmmaking.

 

09. -20.01.25    BIG OPENING on the 9th of JANUARY

FILM + FREE-SAUNA @BABYLON)

+ THANKS to Free Fazer Choco + Free Kukko's Beer

MODERN SILENT COMEDY:   STILL TO ENJOY on SUNDAY

Silent Trilogy LIVE with the ravishing music of Ykspihlajan Kino-orkesteri

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The actress Alma Poysti, who was nominated for a Golden Globe in 2024, will bring a very special glamour to the festival when she comes to Berlin for the screening of Aki Kaurismäki's latest work ‘Falling Leaves’Fallende Blätter (2023).

If you would like to see the leading actress Alma Poysti live, you should definitely get a ticket for the screening including Q&A afterwards on Saturday, 11 January at 20:00 lHIER

By the way: The festival programme even offers another current film with Alma Pöysti in the leading role: ‘Finlandia: Four little adults’ by Selma Vilhunen, with screenings on 13.1., 21:30 & 16.1., 17:45. Highly recommended!

FINLANDIA – A word that sounds like a melody. 

A melody that evokes images of forests, lakes, endless landscapes – like, by the way, Marko Röhr's Nature Symphony (Luontosinfonia).

However, Finnish cinema by no means only reproduces common images about the country and its people in the far north. It also shows dreary suburbs, desolate apartments and lonely, taciturn people who then unexpectedly meet the love of their lives, as in Aki Kaurismäki'  s Falling Leaves.   

For many, Kaurismäki stands for contemporary Finnish cinema par excellence. Films whose heroes are often so-called ordinary people, loners, outsiders that deal with existential conflicts such as power/powerlessness, violence/revenge, isolation/love; big topics. This makes Kaurismäki a great  master.

FINLANDIA shows Aki Kaurismäki's complete oeuvre spanning four decades.

But FINLANDIA goes further, showing current documentaries and feature films, but also silent films and classic sound films from the 1930s and 60s: a unique festival of Finnish cinema in terms of selection and quantity, something of it’s kind Berlin has never seen before.   

FINLANDIA opens with a nod to the era of classic silent film: Silent Trilogy (only 9.1. live with Ykspihlajan Kino-orkesteri (Helsinki))  (STILL TO SEE on SUNDAY 17:00) is an up to date silent filmcomedy, made in 2023, accompanied live by the ravishing sounds of the Ykspihlajan kino-orkesteri, which cam teo Babylon from Finland just for the OPENING...

In their typical mixture of jazz and Nordic ethno, the eight members of the combo transcend the peculiar happenings of Silent Trilogy and trigger moments of pure happiness – something most welcomed in these times.

FINLANDIA – AKI KAURISMÄKI AND FRIENDS would not have been possible without the friendly, generous support of a number of institutions and their people.

We would like to thank the EMBASSY OF FINLAND in Berlin, especially Dan Ekholm, Sofie Backman and Sini-Tuuli Saaristo.

From the FINLAND INSTITUTE in Berlin: Mikko Fritze and Marion Holtkamp. Jaana Puskala and Arttu Manninen from the FINNISH FILM FOUNDATION (Helsinki) as well as Mikko Kuutti and Tommi Partanen from the FINNISH FILM ARCHIVE (KAVI). It was a smooth, wonderful cooperation: THANK YOU!

Last but not least:

What would Finland be without its national cultural asset: THE SAUNA?

It will also be available at FINLANDIA in BABYLON (Hirtenstr. Side Street  from BABYLON direction Cinema 2)

Three of them stand sideways in front of the Babylon in Hirtenstraße.

One for women, one for men and one for mixed use.

PLUS 2 Whirlpools one cold, one Hot!!!

Anyone who buys a ticket for FINLANDIA can use them free of charge***

In this way, we are bringing Finland to Berlin in a very concrete and physical way.

Friedemann Beyer / Timothy Grossman

*** while stocks last legal action excluded    Solange der Vorrat reicht rechtsweg ausgeschlossen