La Terre de nos ancêtres

Northern Finland in the 1940s. After young Martta quenched her bodily lust with Oula, the reindeer herder, she finds herself pregnant – and the target of her tiny village’s scorn, which is driven by frightful religious fervour given a volatile edge by all-pervasive alcoholism. Naturalism never looked as raw and gruesome as it does in this monument of Finnish cinema, an über-classic widely venerated in its home country as one of the most devastating expressions of the human soul in its deepest despair. In the darkest period of Finnish cinema, when few films were produced and almost none made any money, it became for some years the most successful local release of all times, and put big-screen debutant but already TV-famous director Rauni Mollberg on the map of world cinema. For more on this savagely honest masterpiece and the twisted fate of its auteur, please watch Dinosaur by Mollberg’s former assistant Veikko Aaltonen. (International Film Festival Rotterdam)