In some of the key roles are Tommi Korpela, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Ville Virtanen, Jonna Järnefelt, Hannu-Pekka Björkman, Helen Söderqvist, Hendrik Toompere and Sampo Sarkola.

The film part of the ‘Finland 100’ centenary celebration year 2017 is based on Antti Tuuri’s best-selling eponymous novel, that Tuuri himself adapted for the silver screen with director AJ Annila (Sauna, Jade Warrior).

The Eternal Road focuses on an American Finn Jussi Ketola who lives peacefully in a farm in Finland. One night in 1930, right wing thugs abduct him and drive him to Stalin's Soviet Union. In the Soviet Union, the state police give him a new identity, job and even a wife. Together with American immigrants who have voluntarily arrived in the Soviet Republic of Karelia, he takes part in building a worker’s ‘paradise’ that quickly turns in hell under Stalin’s regime.

“Finally we get to honour the memory of these people who followed their idealism to a strange country and died there, betrayed and forgotten,” said producer Ilkka Matila of Matila Röhr Productions. The €2.85m film is co-produced with Estonia’s Taska Film and Sweden’s Anagram Film & TV, with support among others from Nordisk Film & TV Fond. Nordisk Film Distribution plans to release the film domestically on September 22, 2017.