Born of newsreels and archival footage, an opus of a generation “raised for their country”. These are children who saw nationalism flourish on all levels of life after Finland gained independence in 1917. Crying infants, swaddled in white cotton in a hospital backyard, grow up to be students of military doctrine, hygiene fundamentals and housekeeping excellence. As years go by, discipline, ideals and enthusiasm shift and drift – they are waiting for the enemy they have been schooled for. And soon enough – a dozen or so years later – they are the generation that defines the next war.  

Meditating on the adage “if you want peace, prepare for war”, the scale of this montage film by the experienced Finnish director and film critic Suhonen absorbs the viewer. Ornaments composed of moving images and photographs, radio recordings and books, periodicals and government documents reveal the totality of cinematic prosody. A Big Screen Competition participant at International Film Festival Rotterdam, this film showcases veritable excellence in both rhythm and narration, as well as aesthetics, with notes of painful allegory. This is the youth of a hundred years ago – their paranoia, uncertainty, anxiety is so similar to the backdrop of this day, as a war is rumbling in Ukraine, just a thousand kilometres from the film theatre.