‘The Midwife’ (fin.’Kätilö’) is a romance-drama set during WWII in Finland’s Lapland province, a major European battle ground of the war. Based on Katja Kettu’s bestselling novel, ‘The Midwife’ turns on the love affair between a Lapp midwife and a Nazi SS officer set against the backdrop of the Lapland War, which opposed Finnish and Germany armies in 1944-45. The themes in the story are international. It’s about conquering love and war, and class boundaries that are broken down.

A 14-year-old boy in a stifling Helsinki slum takes some unwise life lessons from his soon-to-be-incarcerated older brother, in Finnish master Pirjo Honkasalo’s gorgeously stylized and emotionally devastating work about what we pass on to younger generations, and the ways we do it.