Three generations of Finns walked into industrial America and built their own damn world.
How Finnish immigrants came into contact — and conflict — with industrial America. Three generations of Finnish-Americans recount how they coped with harsh realities by creating their own institutions: churches, temperance halls, socialist halls, and cooperatives.
Direction
Four directors somehow made one coherent, intimate epic.
Editing
Cuts between archival silence and living memory hit like grief.
Director
Mary Dore
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
This was one of the first documentaries funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities to focus specifically on working-class immigrant experience rather than 'great men' history.
The filmmakers spent years earning trust in Finnish-American communities across the Upper Midwest; several interviewees had never spoken on record before and died shortly after filming.
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