Finnish Blood Swedish Heart (2012)

Kai, an ex-musician and a son in his forties, asks his father Tauno to drive him from Oulu in Northern Finland all the way down to Gothenburg in Southern Sweden to revisit the places they lived in back in the 1970's - from Kai's childhood until he was a teenager. The journey of a father and son turns into a musical trip into the emotional memory and the history of Finnish immigration in Sweden; of shame, guilt, crime, alcoholism, and family secrets. "Finnish Blood Swedish Heart" tells the personal story of a father and a son, but also that of those 600,000 Finns who moved to Sweden in the 1960's-1970's as migrant workers escaping the huge unemployment in Finland. Around 200,000 of them returned back to Finland in the 1980s. Kai and Tauno were among those who returned. The film creates a special cinematic genre of its own. While being a documentary, it also is a road movie, and a musical. The musical backbone of the film is formed by songs written in the 1970's by the first generation of Finnish immigrants in Sweden, and performed live in the film by second generation Swedish-Finnish musicians.