Markku Lehmuskallio

Anerca, Breath of Life (2020)

Markku Lehmuskallio has devoted a large part of his documentary work to the indigenous people of the Arctic Circle. In this latest film, co-directed with his son Johannes Lehmuskallio, he composes a fascinating poetic ethnography inspired by the singing, d ...

Wandering in the White (2019)

When two former top orienteers end up in a snowstorm in Lapland wilderness, they face an impossible orienteering task: how to reach your destination when you can't tell earth from sky? ...

Pyhä (2017)

Tsamo (2015)

In the 1860's Alaska and Finland are simultaneously parts of the Russian Empire. A Finnish mining engineer Simon buys a Tlingit girl named Tsamo and decides to bring her to Finland. The child, Tsamo, is baptized and Simon starts to teach her European mann ...

Minja (2014)

A fertilized egg develops into a human. He is born, lives his life and eventually dies. Human life is a journey, the path we take from birth to death. The film is a story about the journey of Minja's life. At the end of the film, there is a dedication to ...

Yksitoista ihmisen kuvaa (2012)

A documentary co-directed by Anastasia Lapsui and Markku Lehmuskallio presenting the mind and thoughts of artists who lived before the history of writing. ...

Pudana: Last of the Line (2010)

A little Nenets girl Neko is taken against her will from her home to a boarding school in a remote Russian village. Forced to adapt to a foreign culture and new customs, Neko rebels and decides to flee, hoping to get back to her family and old habits. ...

Earth Evocation (2009)

The history of Finland through traces of the past. ...

Travelling (2008)

Nedarma (Travelling) is one of several documentary features co-directed by Anastasia Lapsui and Markku Lehmuskallio that portray the daily lives of the Nenets, Lapsui's tribe based in the northern tundra of Siberia. The film invokes Nenets cosmology as a w ...

Fata Morgana (2004)

Story about life and death according to Chukchi people who live in Chukchi Peninsula as far in the East as one can go. ...

A Bride of the Seventh Heaven (2004)

An elderly Nenets woman in teepee on northern Russia's Yamal Peninsula recounts her early life betrothed to a deity for the entertainment of a blind young girl. In the Nenets culture, a girl child can be married to holiest of holies, Num, before or after h ...

Mothers of Life (2002)

A documentary on the experiences of the Nubetya Yaptiks nomadic family in the Yamal Peninsula, Eastern Siberia, from 1992 to 2001. ...

Seven Songs from the Tundra (2000)

An anthology of stories about the indigenous Nenet peoples of the Northern Russian tundra, and how their way of life was disrupted by the advent of Soviet power. ...

Uhri - elokuva metsästä (1998)

The film is both a folkloric film and a social documentary about the Selkupi people who live in Siberia and make their living from hunting and fishing. The film follows the life of Yuri Mikhailovich Kalin's family, which consists of fishing, trapping fur a ...

Anna (1997)

Anna tells the story of a woman of the Nganasan, a severely endangered people of the Taymyr Peninsula. ...

Jäähyväisten kronikka (1995)

Lost Paradise (1994)

Ethnographic documentary. ...

In Reindeer Shape Across the Sky... (1993)

This Finnish documentary film directed, written, produced and shot by Markku Lehmuskallio is the first part of a documentary trilogy about the Nenets people. It's a folkloric documentary describing the traditional nomadic life of the Nenets on the Yamal Pe ...

I Am – A Film About the Art of People Living in the Tundra: Prehistory and Encounter (1992)

A close and passionate look at the art of arctic peoples from the earliest findings to the beginning of the 20th century. "There are no talking heads, there is no dramatic lighting or sharp focus in these two long movies. Rather, each object is lovingly fi ...

I Am – A Film About the Art of People Living in the Tundra: Contemporary Art (1992)

The second half of this two-part work of anthropological research, during which he met Anastasia Lapsui in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. Seven years in the making, this film became the turning point in Lehmuskallio's artistic path. "I started from In ...

Inuksuk (1988)

The film follows researchers working at a Canadian research station as they become acquainted with Inuit culture. ...

The Blue Mammy (1985)

Deaf artist Joel lives with his parents on a small farm, where he and his paintings are not appreciated. ...

Skierri – vaivaiskoivujen maa (1982)

A film about herder Niila and Sami environment in the time of change and plight. First partly Saami language fiction film in Finland. ...

Milka: A Film About Taboos (1980)

Based on a novel by the late Finnish writer Timo Mukka, this simple story focuses on what happens when Milka (Irma Huntus), a girl barely out of childhood, gets pregnant by Ojanen (Matti Turunen) a rustic fieldhand. Her own mother had been hoping to marry ...

The Raven's Dance (1980)

With a keen sense of visual beauty, director Markku Lehmuskallio has created a thought-provoking, aesthetic film about a married couple and an old man living in a remote part of Finland. The young husband goes out hunting but only to support himself and hi ...

Pulakapina (1977)

Based on a true story about the so called 1932 Horse Rebellion in Nivala, Finland. The decision to put down a sick horse owned by a poor farmer rises the farmers in open rebellion against the authorities. ...

Antti Puuhaara (1976)

In 17th-century Pohjola, young Antti Puuhaara is looking for himself, because he has grown up with no knowledge of his childhood. Two actors, the tragedian and the comedian, who were banished from Tsarist Russia to Karelia, had predicted to the crooked mer ...

Kesän maku (1975)

Liisa, a young nurse returns to a remote island where she has spent the summer leaves in her youth. She soon gets to know some of the regular residents on the island, Pekka and Paula. During the summer party the underlying tensions mount. ...

Tapiola (1974)

A hunter brings a feathered bird as an offering to the goddess of his ancestors. Tapiola is a film-poem in defense of nature and humanity. It is also a documentary that tells the story of modern man's loss of contact with the environment and its transforma ...

Mies jolla on kahdet kasvot (1974)

The Sounds of the Northern Forests (1973)

A waterfall, a moose, a marsh. Graceful swans, owls and woodpeckers. A change of season and, finally, the invasion of human civilization, the sound of chainsaws and gunfire. From the perspective of the animals, the film explores the ecological disaster and ...

In the company of Anastasia & Markku, filmmakers from the Far North (2023)

Markku Lehmuskallio, Finnish, is a woodsman turned filmmaker. Anastasia Lapsui, born under a Nenètse tepee and the granddaughter of a shaman, became a radio journalist in the Nenètse language and has never stopped singing the stories of the tundra. They ...

In Reindeer Shape Across the Sky... (1993)

This Finnish documentary film directed, written, produced and shot by Markku Lehmuskallio is the first part of a documentary trilogy about the Nenets people. It's a folkloric documentary describing the traditional nomadic life of the Nenets on the Yamal Pe ...

Aikalainen (1984)

A Finnish adaptation of Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky. ...