Fire-Eater

The twin sisters Helena and Irene are born in Helsinki during the Second World War. A few months later their mother Sirkka leaves them with their grandmother, an old communist, and goes off with a German soldier. Life under the grandmother’s protection ends first with the death of Stalin and then with hers, and at eight the girls are put in an orphanage. Their mother turns up there with Ramon, a Spanish trapeze artist scouting talent for a German circus. Ramon trains the reluctant Irene through the tours and she becomes the trapeze star; the hard work exhausts her and one day she falls from a height. Helena, meanwhile, has secretly learned to eat fire. Elina Hurme plays the lead in Pirjo Honkasalo’s hundred and four minute Finnish film, completed in 1998.