The Eternal Road

Finland, 1930. Jussi Ketola is a worker who has come home after the depression years in America. One summer night a nationalist group takes him from his house, beats him, and marches him along the route known as the Eternal Road toward the Soviet border. They mean to shoot him; Ketola escapes and crosses to the other side. There he is given a new name, a job and a house. Soviet Karelia is full of Finns who came from America and Canada, all of them there to build a workers' paradise. Then, at the end of the thirties, Stalin's purges begin and those same people are counted as spies. All Ketola wants is to get back to his family. Antti-Jussi Annila directs, adapting Antti Tuuri's novel, with a screenplay by Annila and Aku Louhimies. Tommi Korpela plays Ketola. A hundred and three minutes.