It Started Well
( Alku oli hyvä )

Susanna Salonen
2006 - 73 min - Beta numérique - Couleur - Finlande, Allemagne

"When I was eighteen, my mother went on a package holiday and didn’t come back for fifteen years" says the filmmaker Susanna Salonen.
She takes a witty and critical look at her mother Riitta, who writes home from the other side of the world: "Dear child, do you know how they celebrate Christmas in Australia? You take some cans of beer and a Christmas tree to the beach and then you decorate the tree with the empty beer cans."
Riitta returns to Lübeck after spending thirteen years in Australia but no longer feels at home in Germany, fails to find a job and decides to return to her real home, Finland. The film starts as she arrives there.