National Competition: What Remains

When an immigrant taxi driver finds the ashes of a deceased stranger in his backseat, his night shift turns into a search for a final resting place that transcends cultures. Can the literal ground be our common ground, The Forest You Live In asks.

The voice over in the animation things that i was gathering says: “I am gathering things for my detained friends, who were protesting against the war — books, plush toys, food. once, twice. Now the list never ends, and I am gathering my own things.”

The documentary Aeternus Florere takes us to a street corner in an East Helsinki suburb, where a small red wooden cottage stands with a light that shines from inside and various colourful flowers can be seen behind the window shutters. Among the flowers is Maija who has run this flower kiosk called Sallan Kukka for 50 years and is now trying to let go of her life’s work with the help of her husband Jorma, whom she met even before she opened the kiosk.

In After Ego, a boundary stone between the lands of two elderly brothers has disappeared. Accompanied by their lawyers and a surveying engineer, the men meet each other during a boundary survey, on the separate sides of their childhood stream.

All the Love in My Body enters a touristic beach in Greece from the perspective of Nadia and Samara, two young Romani sisters selling toys. Sunbathers preoccupied with the beauty and struggle of their everyday lives meet the girls with varied levels of interaction and indifference until tragedy cuts a clear line through the boundaries of their humanity.