Mother of Mine 2005

Against the backdrop of the Winter War and the Continuation War, the film follows Eero Lahti [Esko Salminen], a Finnish boy who has just returned from Sweden after attending the funeral of Signe Jönsson [Maria Lundqvist], the woman who raised him there. He begins a long, careful conversation with his biological mother Kirsti Lahti [Marjaana Maijala], as they work to clear years of confusion and unspoken hurt and to understand how each has lived with the past.

Biographical history and war-torn hardship shape the family from the start: his biological father Lauri [Kari-Pekka Toivonen] dies on the Finnish front, sending Kirsti into a deep, consuming depression. As the war grows harsher, Eero is sent to Sweden to live with a welcoming Swedish family: Hjalmar Jönsson [Michael Nyqvist], his wife Signe Jönsson [Maria Lundqvist], and a grandfather, Isoisä Ruotsissa [Brasse Brännström], who cannot speak but hears everything. The home offers safety, yet it also plants the seeds of cultural and linguistic distance that will define Eero’s early years away from his birth country.

At first, the arrangement is practical and strained: Eero struggles with the idea of staying, Signe faces the language barrier, and the household dynamics push him toward questions about belonging. Signe’s motivation is complicated by a painful memory—she once lost her six-year-old daughter Elin in a drowning accident, a tragedy that colors her desire for a daughter revived in the care of a boy who has become part of her world. The family’s efforts to bridge two cultures lay the groundwork for a tentative adjustment, as Eero begins to sense a growing warmth in this new environment.

Over time, the initial resistance softens. The Swedish kinship deepens into something more tender and protective: care, attention, and shared routines create a genuine bond between Eero and his Swedish guardians. The once-distant household becomes a second home in many ways, and the relationship between the boy and his caregivers grows into a tight, almost filial closeness that neither side anticipated.

Years pass, and the war finally subsides. Finland withdraws, and the children who sought safety in Sweden are sent back to their homeland. Helsinki’s life slowly improves, and the pressure to return to his biological mother grows stronger, even as the ties to his Swedish family—especially to the patient, guiding presence of his adoptive mother—have become hard to sever. Eero is eventually compelled to return to Kirsti, but the emotional rift remains, underscored by a hard truth: the bond forged in Sweden cannot be simply replicated in Finland, and distance has reshaped what he once thought possible.

In adulthood, Eero speaks of that difficult period with quiet honesty. He recalls the belief that opening up to another person might cost him everything again, a fear that lingered long after the war ended. He confesses that even after returning from Skåne, his bond with Kirsti felt altered—less a simple mother-child closeness and more a complicated, guarded relationship that could never fully resemble what they had hoped to recapture. The story closes on a memory of longing and loss, tempered by time and tempered by the undeniable, enduring impact of the choices made during a war that touched every corner of their lives.