Mother of Mine ( Äideistä parhain ) [DVD]

“Mother of mine” is the English title of a Finnish-Swedish historical drama about one of the Finnish war children who were evacuated to Sweden during World War Two. The movie premiered in 2005 at the Toronto International Film Festival. It was released on DVD in 2007 and 2010. Here is some basic information about it:** The title in Finland: “Äideistä parhain”** The title in Sweden: “Den bästa av mödrar”** Directed by Klaus Härö** Screenplay written by Veikko Aaltonen, Jimmy Karlsson, and Kirsi Vikman** Based on a novel by Heikki Hietamies** Soundtrack: Finnish and Swedish** Subtitles: English and Korean** Run time: 103 minutesThe cast includes the following:** Topi Majaniemi as Eero Lahti (as a boy - during the war)** Marjaana Maijala as Kirsti Lahti – Eero’s mother (during the war)** Maria Lundqvist as Signe Jönsson – Eero’s Swedish mother** Michael Nyqvist as Hjalmar Jönsson – Eero’s Swedish father** Penny Elvira Loftéen as Siv – Signe’s niece (the neighbour’s daughter)** Marie Göranzon as Mrs Rouva Grevnas – the Swedish Committee to help the Finnish Children** Esko Salminen as Eero (as an adult - in 1992)** Aino-Maija Tikkanen as Kirsti Lahti – Eero’s mother (in 1992)Heikki Hietamies is a Finnish writer, who was born in 1933. His novel, on which this movie is based, was published in 1992. While it is a work of fiction, it is based on true historical facts.During World War Two more than 70,000 Finnish children were evacuated to neighbouring countries: Denmark, Norway and Sweden. More than half of them were sent to Sweden. This movie tells the story of one of these children: Eero Lahti, who was born in 1934. His mother (Kirsti Lahti) was born ca. 1912.The children were evacuated because of the war. Finland was involved in World War Two on two occasions.** The first time: the Winter War, 1939-1940. When the USSR attacked Finland and won, Finland was forced to surrender part of its territory to the victor.** The second time, the War of Continuation, 1941-1944. When Germany attacked the USSR, Finland decided to join the German war effort, hoping to get the lost territories back again. When the war ended, Finland lost once more. While some of the territories lost in the Winter War was handed back, the general conditions of the peace treaty from 1947 were harsh.The Finnish children were evacuated because of the war. The danger of war; the uncertainty of war. When the Winter War began, nobody could know how it was going to end. Was the USSR going to take a part of Finland or perhaps all of Finland? The parents wanted to make sure that some Finnish children did not end up on Soviet territory.At this point it is time to explain the title of the movie. Not the English title, which is very general, but the Finnish title which can be translated as “The Best of Mothers.”Eero does not want to go to Sweden, but he has to go. When he arrives in Sweden and meets his new “parents,” he does not want to adjust to the new place. It is a difficult start. While his father Hjalmar gives him a warm welcome, his mother Signe is cold and reserved. For reasons, which are explained in the movie, she was hoping that the Finnish child would be a girl. When she realises that it is a boy, she is deeply disappointed. But after a while, things get better. Eero begins to feel at home and Signe begins to like her son. She tells him she is sorry they had a bad start. From now on she will try to do better. She says she will be “the best of mothers.” Hence the title of the movie.As you can see from the chart above, there are two time zones in the movie. The first zone is in the past, during the war. The second zone is in 1992, which we can call “the present.” In 1939, when the war begins, Eero is ca. 5. In 1945, when the war ends, he is ca. 11. In 1992, Eero is 58, while his mother is ca. 80. The movie flips back and forth between the past and the present. But it does not happen often. Most of the movie is set in the past. Many years after the war (in 1992) Eero and his mother try to talk about what happened to him and to her during the war. The scenes which are set in the present (1992) are made in black-and-white, while the past is in colour.On the outside, there is not so much activity in this movie. The action is inside the characters. It is a psychological drama, which tries to show what happens to the characters involved. How does Eero feel when he has to go to Sweden against his will? How does he feel when he has to go back to Finland, also against his will? How does his mother feel when she has to send him to a foreign country on his own? How does she feel when he comes back to Finland after the war?Evacuating the Finnish children was a huge project. Sweden received more than half of the 70,000 children. The project was initiated with the best intentions. The purpose was to save the children. And they were saved, meaning they survived, because they came to a country which was not at war. Sweden was neutral during the war. When the operation is studied today, scholars do not only ask if the children lived or died. They also want to study the psychological aspect of the project. Recent studies seem to indicate that the children who were sent to Sweden suffered more than those who stayed in Finland.Eero’s case illustrates the problem. He was removed from his comfort zone two times. First when he was sent to Sweden, and later when he was sent back to Finland. He was uprooted two times during his childhood. Something like this may damage a person for life. Survival is important, but it is not the only thing. It is also important to know how a person survives.The Finnish children who remained in Finland were in danger, but they were in their usual surroundings and they did not have a language problem, because their family and friends could understand them. When Eero arrived in Sweden there was a big language problem. Finnish is similar to Estonian and Hungarian, but it is completely different from the other Scandinavian languages: Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish.What do reviewers say about this movie? On IMDb it has a rating of 77 per cent, which corresponds to (almost) four stars on Amazon. On Rotten Tomatoes it has an audience score of 95 per cent, which corresponds to (almost) five stars on Amazon. If you ask me, the former rating is too low, while the latter rating is more appropriate. On the US version of Amazon there are 45 reviews of this product. The average rating is 4.7 stars.I want to go all the way to the top with this product. I think it deserves a rating of five stars. The script is well-written and the actors play their roles well. While it is a work of fiction, it is based on true historical facts. In addition, it covers an aspect of World War Two that is not so well known. This side of the story deserves to be told and in this movie it is told very well.PS # 1. For more information, see the following books:**  To the Bomb and Back: Finnish War Children Tell Their WWII Stories  edited by Sue Saffle with a foreword by Kai Rosnell (2015)**  Sunpath: The War Orphan Train  by Michael Maryk (2013) (this book is a work of fiction based on true historical facts)PS # 2. The following articles are available online:** “Finnish children sent to Sweden to avoid war suffered more than those who stayed,” Science Daily, 2 April 2013** “New Perspective on Finnish war children,” Linköping University, 14 March 2014PS # 3. The following article is available online, but only if you have a special permission to access the journal: Cecilia Heilala and Nina Santavirta, “Unveiling the war child syndrome: Finnish war children’s experiences of the evacuation to Sweden during WWII from a lifetime perspective,” Journal of Loss and Trauma, volume 21, issue # 6, 2016.PS # 4. The Swedish actress Maria Lundqvist has appeared in many movies and television programs, including the recent Swedish television series “30 Degrees in February” ( season one  2015,  season two  2016).PS # 5. The DVD released in 2007 is region 0, which means that it can be played in all regions of the world. The disc plays without any problems on my laptop from Europe when I use a program called VLC Media Player. Because it was released by a South Korean company, it has subtitles in English and Korean. The subtitles are optional. You can choose Korean or English. They are well-synchronised with the words spoken by the actors.

A friend showed me this movie when I was staying with him in Chengdu, Sichuan. I enjoyed it so much that I tracked down a DVD on Amazon when I was back in London. If you want an insight into modern China, touching drama, some very funny scenes and some beautiful Chinese scenery then you can't go wrong with this.

I bought this film for my own mother without reading a single review. It was a fascinating and heartwrenching film that challenges what it really means to be a mother. Every scene in the movie is brilliantly shot. After I stopped crying I bought two more copies of the DVD as gifts to the other mothers in my family. I cannot rate this film highly enough.

Hundreds of thousands if not millions of children died in the Second World War, many of them, especially Jewish children, deliberately killed. Imagine that as an adult — wanting to kill a child and doing it. War is murderous insanity.Thousands of children who lived through the violence made by their elders escaped with their lives but not their childhoods. Their lives as refugees could not be normal. They depended on the kindness and goodness of strangers to survive.The odyssey of young Eero, a 9-year-old Finnish boy, is tenderly depicted in this heartbreakingly sad and beautiful film. In the beginning he has a family: his papa and mama, but no siblings. They form a solidarity of three. But war comes and Finland must be defended, first from the Russians, then the Germans. Papa must go. He does, but he does not return. In his place comes a sad, black-clad pastor with a Bible, bearing terrible news. Eero's family of three becomes a family of two.The Finnish borders will not hold. The enemy marches nearer. The children must be evacuated. Finland cannot accommodate all its displaced children, so safe havens must be found wherever they can. Sweden opens its doors. It hates the Nazis as much as the rest of us. The Swedes are technically neutral, but theirs is a defiant neutrality tinged with contempt and loathing, understandable and even appropriate under the circumstances.Eero's mother must send her child away. It happens less sorrowfully than expected and makes one wonder about the degree of her devotion to the boy.He is put aboard a large ship with hundreds of other displaced children. They steam across the Gulf of Bothnia in the silver moonlight, docking in the north of the country the next morning. It is summer, the moment of eternal Nordic light, and Eero's new green world looks magnificent in it — vast blue skies, rolling hills, verdant fields.A farming family takes him in. Oddly, the couple have no children of their own, so yet again Eero is on his own as an only child. In Finland he was a quiet boy. Now, knowing no Swedish, he is mute. He has become a boy without a country, father, mother, friends and language. To repeat, he is nine years old.How will he survive? You shall see.By the end, as you may imagine, Eero has two mothers — one Finnish, one Swedish. The war ends. He must go home. Ah, home. What is that? He used to know. He had a papa and mama across the water. But that was long ago, three or four years, a lifetime in the life of a child. All he has known since that distant time are these green fields, the barn, the animals, the house, the dirt drive down to the mailbox and the road that leads to the gulf. These things and his Swedish family.In later life we see Eero as an adult. He is as a man as he was as a boy, thoughtful and silent. A letter from Sweden comes and he must return. We go with him. The barn and house still stand. The road is the same. But time has passed, taking with it perishable things.At first, long ago, the Swedish mother was distant. She was cool and detached. She had problems of her own, complicated feelings to work through. Slowly, ever so slowly, she did. In the end, love was the thing she embraced. He is there now to honour her and that love. War can destroy many things, but not everything.

Very heartfelt story, that will make everyone emotional. It is as perfect of a Cinematic piece as could be made. I knew nothing about the children being sent away until I saw this movie, and am glad I came across it. I have purchased this movie multiple times, as I give my copy to others to watch.Fantastic story, cast flawlessly, and anyone that wants to see a masterpiece will be hard pressed to not like it. It is sad, but you will understand the story perfectly. It is cinema perfection from opening scene to the very end, and must be watched to the final scene.

Schnelle Lieferung des Artikels in einwandfreiem Zustand.Ein sehr berührender und mit hervorragenden Schauspielern besetzter Film.Für mich ein neuer Einblick in die Geschichte.

Saw this once on TV here in Australia. Not released here on DVD. Glad I could see it again thru this purchase.

... for us to watch this poignant film about a child displaced by war, without remembering the issues of that war, or recalling our own or our families' roles in that war? "Mother of Mine" is set in Finland and southern Sweden in the last years of World War II, but war per se is only a backdrop, a cause without a Cause, to the tragedy of the boy Eero, whose father has been killed in battle and whose mother sends him away for his own safety. Eero is twelve years old, speaks only Finnish, but he is taken to live on a farm in Skåne, a rural province of Sweden, by an agency that transported at least 70,000 Finnish children as refugees to such safety. The Swedish family that accepts Eero has recently been traumatized by the death of their own child, and the Mother find's Eero's arrival horribly painful. Meanwhile, Eero's natural mother has found another "man" to love; she will eventually need to choose between the new man and the son whom she's given away.The film narrative is structured as a 'flashback' in the mind of Eero as a 70-year-old man, summoned to the funeral in Sweden of his adoptive mother. Returning from Sweden, Eero visits his birth mother in a nursing home, despite the truth that he has never reconciled himself to her 'abandonment' of him. In a lovely reversal of the usual cinematography, the story of Eero's boyhood is filmed in color, while Eero's visitations after most of a lifetime are filmed in black-and-white.The War, nevertheless, was a presence in my mind while watching this film, possibly because I spent some of my own childhood in Sweden, possibly because I'm just old enough to remember the post-war years clearly. Finland was aligned with Germany in that War; Eero's father fought against the "Allies", specifically against Russia, and Eero's mother worked for the German Occupation Forces. Her new lover was a German soldier. Sweden was purportedly a 'neutral' country, but Swedes of a certain age will forever feel a certain discomfort about that neutrality, which allowed the Germans to transit and attack Norway. At the same time, large numbers of Norwegian Jews fled to Sweden for asylum, and it's true that throngs of Finnish children were fostered during and after the War. It's also true that children of many nations were separated from the families and sheltered in foreign lands. The greatest WW II novel of all, in my opinion -- Austerlitz, by WG Sebald -- tells the story of a Jewish German boy rescued to exile in England.Most viewers, I'm sure, will accept this film on its own a-polotical, a-historical terms. It's a potently sentimental story, a heart-render with an unexpectedly 'gentle' ending. The acting is incredible. Why is it that unknown, never-seen-before-or-again actors are so much more skillful in their portrayals on the screen than all the touted, overpaid, Oscar-acclaimed stars? Eh? Oh well ... Great photography, crisp editing, excellent dialogue (in Finnish and Swedish, but well subtitled). A fine movie for those who appreciate sentiment.

This film magnificently portrays the plight of the Finns and the goodwill of their Swedish neighbors during the Winter War/WWII in Scandinavia. The subtitles could not, however, convey one very important moment in the story: when Eero first arrived at his new school in Sweden, the students sang the Finnish National Anthem in the Swedish language. Finland is a bilingual country and the national anthem is sung in both Finnish and Swedish. Although at the time Eero did not understand the Swedish words to his anthem, he certainly knew the music and understood this as a sign of welcome and solidarity. Even if you are not a Finn, or of Finnish heritage, if you understand the importance of this scene, it will likely move you to tears. Overall, the scenes depicting the Soviet Union's (Russia's) aggression against its peaceful neighbor, the Finns, and their valiant fight against the superior power, serve to remind us today that history does indeed repeat itself, but the good and compassion in the hearts of even a few will overshadow the evil of many.