Mother of Mine (2005) — Finland

           When Russia bombed Finland in World War II, more than 70,000 Finnish children were sent to neutral Sweden by their parents to escape the horrors of war. This film personalizes that history by focusing on one family's story. The film begins when Eero Lahti makes an emotional return to Sweden as an adult for the funeral of the mother who welcomed him into their home, and with him confessing to his aged mother about his lifelong feelings of abandonment by her. The movie then reverts to 1943 when Eero was only nine years old. The Swedish host family, Hjalmar and Signe, had its own motives, both good and bad, for hosting a "war child" from Finland, and then its own ways of dealing with Eero once he was with them. Eero's biological mother, Kirsti, had her own deeply mixed emotions of guilt, regret, and love, along with horrible choices to make during the war. In between these two mothers is little Eero who as an adult still deals with the psychological complexities of two mothers who loved him in their deeply human but broken ways. In Finnish and Swedish with English sub-titles.