Juha

"Juha" (1999) is a Finnish silent film shot in black and white you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Aki Kaurismäki. No spoken dialogue — only intertitles, music and faces — set in present-day Finland but made entirely in the grammar of 1920s silent cinema.

Juha (Sakari Kuosmanen) and Mari (Kati Outinen) live quietly on a small farm. A city man named Shemeikka (André Wilms) shows up one afternoon and dismantles everything. He takes Mari away with easy promises; what waits for her in the city is not what he described. Juha goes after her.

Kaurismäki built the film on a Finnish literary archetype — the same folk-tale pattern that runs through decades of national tragedy — and stripped it down to images. Outinen and Kuosmanen had worked with him before, and that trust reads through the silence. A Finland-Germany-France co-production. Stream "Juha" online on iFILM.