The Unknown Soldier

The Unknown Soldier (Tuntematon sotilas, 1955) — watch online on iFILM. Finnish director Edvin Laine adapted Väinö Linna's landmark novel just a year after it was published, and the result became the defining war film of Nordic cinema.

Summer 1941. A Finnish machine-gun company moves east toward the Soviet front. Laine follows a squad of ordinary men — not glory-seekers, but tired, quarrelsome soldiers who joke and grumble while the shooting gets closer. Several of them will not come home.

Linna's novel was an immediate cultural touchstone, and this film carried its blunt, soldier's-eye view of the Continuation War to a wider audience. At 181 minutes it earns every one of them. Stream The Unknown Soldier online on iFILM.