Best Finnish crime movies

Sound of Violence (2021)

As a child, the brutal murder of her family made Alexis regain her hearing along with synesthetic abilities. Now as an adult, she finds solace in the sounds of bodily harm. But when she’s told she might lose her hearing again, she escalates her gruesome sound experiments in a quest to compose her masterpiece.

The Look of a Killer (2016)

Viktor Kärppä was forced involuntarily in the middle of Russia's internal power struggle. Soon bunch of assassins as well as Security Police are trying to catch Kärppä. Kärppä's family is also in great danger. In order to save themselves and their families they need to resort to Kärppäs friend, the police Korhonen , as well as his brother Aleksei.

The Hijack That Went South (2013)

Aarno Lamminparras hijacked an airplane with a gun in 1978. A true story.

Routa (2024)

A man is released from prison after 22 years. He tries to live a simple life as a farmer. At the same time, a company director is fighting a hostile takeover from a bigger corporation. Two different kind of journeys collide in sudden ways.

Silmät hämärässä (1952)

A mad writer checks into a hotel. In the window of a opposite building he sees four men and starts to write their life story. Every man is an anonymous person who have done or experienced something irreversible in his life. They end up together to plan a heist.

Betrayal (2018)

Radio tekee murron (1951)

Eager young radio reporter Teräsvuori stages a one-man burglary into the Helsinki Art Museum, recorded on tape for a later broadcast by his friend Laakso. Things go awry when a gang of real criminals overhear their plans and book their heist to coincide. Teräsvuori gets caught but escapes from police custody to start his private investigations together with female radio colleague Eila.

Vaaksa vaaraa (1965)

A technician working in the telephony company receives a mysterious packet.

Yöjuna (1996)

Pimeys odottaa (1985)

Matti Mäki is a young man who gets involved with a corrupt police man seeking proof that his wife, a night club singer, is cheating on him in this film noir style thriller.

Make Like a Thief (1964)

Arrested for a murder he didn't commit, American adventurer Bart Lanigan is about to be deported from Finland on a freighter. In the Helsinki harbor, he himself becomes a target for a hit man but manages to escape back to land. Lanigan contacts Arvo Mäki, a womanizing local con man recommended to him as a man he could trust. Lanigan is in Finland to catch an American millionaire businessman, Leonard Weston alias Lawrence Walker, who has fled the USA with the company's monies and begun investing them in Finland. Looking for the mysterious L.W. character while trying to get rid of various hit men, Lanigan and Mäki travel around picturesque southern Finland, joined by a pretty night club singer Marja Salo who won't leave Lanigan alone and insists on marrying him.

Kuollut mies kummittelee (1952)

Sarmo explores the mystery associated with the murder of a landowner and the tangle of crimes, threats, and conspiracies created by a letter he left behind. At the same time Sarmo helps the consuls of imaginary small states of South America in a difficult situation, and charms their daughters.

Tie pimeään (1962)

Klaus Grahn is a young student frustrated with his life. In an attempt to break free from his unfulfilling life he tries to commit the perfect crime and forges a large check. Quickly he runs out of money and the police identifies him as the criminal, and so he boards a train to Tampere where he robs a taxi and shoots the driver. He returns to Helsinki and manages to avoid the police, but his friends and family try to persuade him into giving himself up. Klaus is angered by this, and he flees, plagued by paranoid thoughts until he decides to confront his friends for the last time - this time with a gun.

Tåg norrut (1952)

The destinies of different kind of people encounter in a passenger train that is traveling from Helsinki to the North.

Mannen utan ansikte (1995)

A heavily indebted construction entrepreneur robs a bank in Jakomäki, Helsinki. He takes two officers and one customer hostage from the bank. In addition to himself, the desperate robber threatens to blow up the hostages if the police who left to follow them try to prevent the escape.

Me and Morrison (2001)

A bittersweet tale of a love affair between two people whose lives seem to have lost all direction. The female lead, Milla, is drifting aimlessly through life until she meets Aki. They fall in love - but happiness in a relationship shadowed by crime and drugs is not necessarily a given. The movie is based on the novel Minä ja Morrison by first-time author Kata Kärkkäinen

The South (2000)

A comedy of crime, romance and deception played out against the background of a vacation under the Mediterranean sun.

Dolly and Her Lover (1990)

Detective Karisto releases Auno 'Räpsy' Pirilä from prison, who in turn has to calve his childhood friend Börje from criminal activities. Alcoholic Dolly takes Räpsy to live in Kallio, Helsinki, and hopes to move to Paris with her in the spring.

Jumalia ei uhmata (1988)

Vive La France (2014)

Kua and Teriki will soon get married. They live on the distant Tureia island in the French Polynesia, Pacific Ocean and have just been told that something is wrong with their son Maokis heart. It is a consequence of living only 100 km away from the island of Moruroa, where France has tested 193 atom bombs for 30 years. Several of their family members are sick and Moruroa can soon collapse, which can lead to a tsunami likely to drown all of them. Vive La France is a personal and intimate story about harvesting the consequences of the French atomic program.

Crime and Punishment (1983)

In Helsinki, an ex-law student turned slaughterhouse worker commits a senseless crime that catapults him into loneliness. Only a woman who accidentally arrived at the crime scene wants to follow him, but guilt and the tightening net of the police throw a shadow over their desperate love affair.

The Tough Ones (1999)

The Tough Ones tells a story of two friends who have a hard time finding their place in the society. Antti and Jussi are released from jail. While they were doing time for bank robbery, the third man involved in the robbery, the one who was not convicted, has become a policeman. He tries to help his friends to settle into the small town in Pohjanmaa, but the boys start a black market liquor business instead. The road seems to lead back to the jail.

8-Ball (2013)

8-Ball tells the story of single mother Pike who, having just been released from prison, is trying to start her life anew. When her former boyfriend Lalli comes back from abroad, it opens a window into a past that Pike wants to put behind her.

Law of the Land (2017)

A retiring policeman gets caught up in between two younger men trying to kill each other. A modern borderline western taking place on both sides of the northern Finnish-Swedish border.

What Remains (2024)

In a psychiatric hospital, an alleged serial killer, his therapist, and a police detective seek to solve a brutal cold case before their obsessive quest for the truth consumes them all.

Hellsinki (2009)

In the mid-1960s, three small-time Finnish bootleggers seize control of their Helsinki neighborhood's black-market liquor business.

Emergency Call - A Murder Mystery (2014)

A father of four children gets brutally stabbed several times, with the children present in the family home. During the brutal action, his wife – Anneli Auer – is on the phone to the emergency center. Emergency Call – A Murder Mystery is a documentary film tracking down the story that unfolds after the fatal night. We hear from all emerging sides as the prosecution builds its case against the mother of four. A behind the scenes look into one of the most bizarre unsolved court cases in recent Finnish history.

Bordertown: The Mural Murders (2021)

A mural painted with blood is found on the wall of Pasila train station, which depicts Finland's best-known serial killer Lasse Maasalo. The text in the mural, “Making the world a better place”, is linked to a voting circulating in social media, where people can vote for persons that world would be a better place without. Soon the first body is found and Sorjonen must find the person who has named himself as The Judge.

Flowers of Evil (2016)

Unrest breaks out in eastern Helsinki as a Finnish family man gets hospitalized in the summer of 2015. Gangs of young people are burning down cars and public buildings, confronting the security guards and the riot police. The narrative goes backwards, towards the riots which mark the end of our movie. As the story begins, the unrest is still bubbling under, ready to explode any time. Vandalism and robbery are not uncommon in the suburbs; neither is violence towards the police and the security guards. Frustration, alienation, isolation and poverty corrode the asphalt surface of the multicultured society, otherwise relatively harmonious.

Vares: The Sheriff (2015)

Jussi Vares find two bodies of Turku outskirts of women, which has been shot in the head, and the man whose body is full of runes similar to the cuts, which suggest that the murder would have been part of the dark ritual. A year later, Vares is hired to investigate these homicides. Cable Wires take Varesta towards Turku underworld dominant invisible godfather, sheriff. Sheriff is the man whom nobody knows and we do not discuss. Vares drifts dangerously close to the "jury", the secret underworld lord clubs, the members of the human spirit is a cheap commodity. Rummaging through the case Vares get too close to the truth.