Home sweet home

A dream that turned into a nightmare. Home Sweet Home is a debt-ridden man's plunge from the edge of the clouds to the rock bottom. Home Sweet Home is a drama film about Sami Luoto, a 40-year-old father with a secret dream.

Aleksi Mäkelä, winner of the State Prize for Cinematography, shot his new film Home Sweet Home in June-July 2010 in cooperation with the City of Vaasa and MediaCity, the regional coordinator. Samuli Edelmann, Katariina Kaitue, Santeri Kinnunen, Kerli Kyllönen and Kristo Salminen play the main roles.

Marko Leino's story, which was awarded with the Yarn of the Year Award, is written as both a novel and a film, and tells the story of a debt-ridden builder – from the bottom of the pyramid of dreams into the abyss. Home Sweet Home is Aleksi Mäkelä's tenth feature film. It premiered on 21 October 2011. Mäkelä's films have attracted 2.5 million admissions. Over the past ten years, Mäkelä's films have averaged 27% of domestic premieres.

Synopsis

Home Sweet Home is a drama film about Sami Luoto (Samuli Edelmann), a 40-year-old father with a secret dream. He wants to succeed like his father and build a grand house for himself, his wife Sari (Katariina Kaitue) and their teenage daughter Annika (Kerli Kyllönen). To achieve his dream, Sami, who has already gone bankrupt once in his youth, sets up a company to build and sell detached houses. The economic outlook is bright and nothing can go wrong. Or can it?

Before Sami knows it, the situation has gotten completely out of hand and he finds himself in the middle of a hostage drama.

Home Sweet Home is one man's plunge, a thriller-drama film that delves deep into contemporary and social human issues. What is the measure of love and success? Is it okay to fail and try again?

Despite the heavy subject matter, the parallel novel of the same name, published in autumn 2010 by Marko Leino, contains plenty of humour and the end of the story is full of hope.

Author's statement

Home Sweet Home novel and film project was launched in early 2009. For a change, I wanted to write a story centred on a relatively ordinary man, with relatively ordinary problems in a relatively ordinary world, after all the heavy and dark crime novels, films and series I had written. I also wanted to create a story in which the light overcomes the darkness, or at least so that there is at least a chance, a hope of survival, at the end of the story.

A global credit recession is the inspiration for Sami Luoto, a 39-year-old construction entrepreneur whose company runs into insurmountable financial difficulties. Sami is a man who has already experienced bankruptcy once in his youth and is not prepared to admit failure a second time. Sami refuses to give up and starts lying and hiding things from his family, especially when he feels that his failure this time is due more to external causes than to his own mistakes.

Home Sweet Home is written in "me" format, and the film is constructed from Sami's point of view, so both the reader and the viewer find themselves "in Sami's pants", whether they like it or not. Although the stories, events and, to some extent, the characters in the book and the film differ, the idea behind both was to build a whole in such a way that the protagonist is forced to realize, through the hardest of hardships, that love is ultimately the most important and only value, below which everything else is secondary.

Marko Leino
writer, screenwriter

ROLES INCLUDE:
Sami Luoto – SAMULI EDELMANN
Sari Luoto – KATARIINA KAITUE
Santtu Luoto – SANTERI KINNUNEN
Annika Luoto – KERLI KYLLÖNEN
Jere – KRISTO SALMINEN
Reijo Luoto – AAKE KALLIALA
Kaarina – PETRA FREY
Jutta – NIINA NURMINEN
Koistinen – AKU HIRVINIEMI
Jaatinen – TOMMI KORPELA
Kaskela – PEKKA HUOTARI
Bank Manager – TAISTO OKSANEN
Bank official – ELINA SALOVAARA
Lotta – ALINA HARMAINEN
Ville – TOIVO VALAKARI
House inspectors – VILLE MYLLYRINNE, KATJA KUKKOLA
Sami 9 yrs – PAAVO VALAKARI
Santtu 7 yrs – ONNI VALAKARI
Doctor – ERKKI SAARELA
Lawyer – ASKO SARKOLA
The assailant – HARRI-PEKKA VIRKKI
Mushroom picker – SOILE KALLIO