Leena Uotila

A promising pro figure skater flees Russia for Finland to escape the trauma and abuse of her inhumane training regimen and its abusive culture.

You may know the lovely cinema of garage-rock auteur Aki Kaurismäki, but his brother Mika is in fact just as prodigious a filmmaker who dexterously and with pleasure jumps from genre to genre. Here’s his Finnish take on the buddy comedy road movie, proving Americans hardly have a claim on the idea!

One cold December night, a shoe box-sized car approaches two little girls. Out steps the McTiny family, who ask the girls for refuge.