Täällä Pohjantähden alla

It's not in fact a movie about the Finnish civil war, but a movie about the social changes that took place in Finland before Finland claimed its independence.

The movie and novel it's based upon are both important, since they bring out the viewpoint of the losing side of the civil war, into which the social changes eventually led. Finnish people bore the scars of the civil war for many decades, and this novel was the first one to take upon the task of healing those scars.

The working class is being pressed on the edge. They are barely more than serfs and have no means of claiming the land they're cultivating and taking care of. The conditions in Finland are fluctuating at best, since the country is still an autonomic part of Russia with it's sovereign rights being disputed. The movie tells of a certain Koskela family trying to make a secure living under these circumstances on the fields they've cleared of the swamps and in the house they built from trees growing in the forests.

Each and every Finn should watch this movie to understand their own roots a lot better!