Ambush

Summer 1941. The Finnish army is massed along the Soviet border waiting for the order to attack. Lieutenant Eero Perkola's platoon is given a reconnaissance job: go through the forest towards Rukajärvi and find the Soviet positions. Twenty men go into the woods. The route stretches out, the map stops matching, the front falls away behind them. Perkola also has Kaarina, whom he left, on his mind. At some point the mission stops being reconnaissance and the platoon can no longer tell who is ambushing whom. Olli Saarela directs the Finnish film; two hours and three minutes, with Peter Franzén as Perkola and Irina Björklund as Kaarina, adapted from Antti Tuuri's novel. It was the most watched film in Finland in 1999. The period it covers is the Continuation War.