According to the story, the heroes of the backyard are "Impression from the moment when a child realizes that childhood is transient". The scriptwriters combined episodes in the film on Merima's two works and placed events in an unspecified town after the wars. Costumes and sculptures refer to the wooden houses of the 1940s and 1950s. The venues included Suomenlinna and the Ruiskumestari House in Helsinki Kruununhaa. The backyard heroes were filmed for 16mm film originally as a television movie , but also taken to theatrical release.
Tuomas Petelius

After her father's funeral, Maarit plans to return to Thailand. On the day of the departure, she finds her mother Sylvi and her father’s taxidermy badger in a bar and Sylvi makes a revelation that may change Maarit’s departure plans.
2024

Rachid is a young man who survives in Morroco boxing in clandestine fights in order to save enough money with which to pay a smuggler, and be able to cross the Strait of Gibraltar with his two friends.
2022

Sihja is a young, charming and a little outrageous fairy who leaves her home in the forest. On arrival in the city, she meets a sensitive new friend, a lonely human boy Alfred. Sihja loves the newly found organized urban shapes and orderly habits that the city people have. One day dead birds appear on the city streets. Alfred and Sihja must find out what is threatening the nature.
2021

Set in the final weekend of the year 1995 Ice Hockey World Championships, 95 tells through overlapping stories why Finland became a ice hockey world champion and how it affected the whole nation.
2017

Set in modern day Helsinki, Finland, Virality portrays the lives of several main characters confronted with viral themes. The film links emerging viral aspects in our modern day societies, such as the spreading of news on the internet, with the viral nature of life itself, as in the storyline of a cancer patient being treated with virotherapy. Being primarily a crime film, the main storyline centers around a bitcoin heist that connects the lives of the main characters. Character storylines involve a young rapper searching for a breakthrough, a policeman who falls for an aspiring musician with a promising international career, a hacker choosing his own path and a cancer patient and a banker who reconcile ten years after the end of their marriage.
2017

Lasse is an old racist who has lives in an apartment block filled with a selection of refugees and immigrants. Kamal is a 16-year old boy who's fed up in his life in Finland, and dreams of moving to Nairobi to live with his father. Only problem is that he doesn't have the money to buy the ticket.
2017

Heli Valkonen is desperately in love with her husband. But Matti is just not in the mood. He is only interested in playing computer games, dressed in worn out fleece pants. For him, a shoulder massage is the highest form of intimacy. When subtle hints, nice words and fetching clothes won't help, Heli resorts in direct, and increasingly direct action - in vain.
2014

The life of a heroine. The life and work of Hella Wuolijoki. A poet, spy and millionaire, she turned into an internationally acclaimed businesswoman, politician and playwright, who collaborated with Europe's leading writers such as Bertolt Brecht and Maxim Gorky, but faced the harshness of a changing world as the Finnish, Soviet and British secret services focus on her life, family and work.
2011

The unusual friendship between a German embassy employee and a twelve-year-old refugee girl helps both of them rediscover their joy in life, but also brings with it suspicion, corruption and violence.
2007

On a quiet street in Helsinki, Sachie has opened a diner featuring rice balls. For a month she has no customers. Then, in short order, she has her first customer, meets Midori, a gangly Japanese tourist, and invites her to stay with her.
2006

An aimless adolescent joins several itinerant misfits who live on the fringe of society and welcome at-risk youths into their fold.
2005

Matti and Niila, growing up in the mid-sixties in the harsh and conservative environment of a Finnish-speaking part of Tornedalen in Swedish Laponia, close to the Finnish border. Their big dream is to become rock stars. In the present the now grown-up Matti feels guilt for the death of his drug-addicted rock star friend Niila.
2004

In this pitch black comedy the rivalry between two neighbors escalates into an all out war. Through a maintenance error on a tractor they both end up, paralyzed, in a wheelchair. It seems they are doomed to stay together. They no longer focus their rage on each other but on the manufacturer of the tractor, in Helsinki. So get ready for a hilarious wheelchair road movie.
2004

September of 1944, a few days before Finland went out of the Second World War. A chained to a rock Finnish sniper-kamikadze Veikko managed to set himself free. Ivan, a captain of the Soviet Army, arrested by the Front Secret Police 'Smersh', has a narrow escape. They are soldiers of the two enemy armies. A Lapp woman Anni gives a shelter to both of them at her farm. For Anni they are not enemies, but just men.
2002

A love story of a 17 year old punk-rocker and a 15 year old runaway girl.
2001

A searing legal drama that centers on a highly credentialed child psychologist whose life is shattered when he's accused of sexually assaulting a young boy he's been treating.
2001

County Durham, England, 1984. The miners' strike has started and the police have started coming up from Bethnal Green, starting a class war with the lower classes suffering. Caught in the middle of the conflict is 11-year old Billy Elliot, who, after leaving his boxing club for the day, stumbles upon a ballet class and finds out that he's naturally talented. He practices with his teacher Mrs. Wilkinson for an upcoming audition in Newcastle-upon Tyne for the royal Ballet school in London.
2000

A quintet of cabbies in five cities and their remarkable fares on the same eventful night.
1991

The Kiljunen family wins a holiday trip to Helsinki and the city will never be the same again.
1981

This Finnish romance tells of a young couple who vacation by the ocean. While there, the unsatisfied man decides he wants to end their relationship. Upon their return home, he has an overnight fling with another woman while his recently dumped girlfriend calmly waits outside his home. When the jilted woman begins to walk alone to her own apartment, she is struck by a passing car, and only then does the young man realize that he truly loves her.
1963