Frozen Land

A false 500-euro note is the catalyst for this hectic and realistic portrait of contemporary Finland. Different episodic narrative lines, within which the grim shared fate of the characters is hidden, are intertwined. Aku Louhimies based the film on a short story by Leo Tolstoy, The Forged Coupon, in which one evil deed is ‘passed on’ and leads to many others; a story that also formed the basis for Robert Bresson’s L’Argent (1983). The young computer hacker Tuomas is planning to marry his equally idealistic girlfriend Elina, who is pregnant. Niko, his best friend, lives a much more dissipated life, filled with drink and drugs. Using Tuomas’ computer, he makes a forged 500-euro note, which is then passed on indirectly to the unsuspecting Isto, who gets into serious trouble. Isto then steals an expensive car from a garage. The garage owner in turn passes on the evil by repossessing the car of a vacuum-cleaner salesman, who loses his job as a result. In the end, the evil that is passed on culminates in a gruesome murder. Louhimies does not avoid tackling several major problems of Finnish society, including alcoholism and violence; issues that are still subject to certain taboos. Frozen Land won four prizes at the Göteborg Film Festival, including the Fipresci Prize from the foreign film press and an award for its camera work. (LC)

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