"Ruthless Times: Songs of Care" at La GRAN Pantalla

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Image courtesy of La GRAN Pantalla.

Ruthless Times: Songs of Care, Susanna Helke (Finland, 2022).

This documentary film with choral tableau vivant (“living painting”) scenes juxtaposed with documentary episodes, captures the current crisis in the Finnish elderly care sector. Anonymous witnesses from healthcare workers have been composed into choral songs. Retirees and senior citizens sing impudent songs that play on the economic jargon of our time, exposing the absurdity of the bureaucratic language that has permeated every aspect of human life.

The film follows the retirees of a small municipality in Eastern Finland as they witness the privatization of their local elderly care services and health workers and confront the digitization of cures, with roaming robots in residence halls and nurses relegated to remote care. The main protagonist is Tiina, a health worker who was one of the first to mention the bad practices that occur in Finland and who has been blacklisted and received personal threats.

With black humor and sometimes dark but moving moments, the film portrays the mismatch between the ethical and economic foundations of care work.

The evening includes a dialogue on the health system with Milagros Pérez Oliva, a journalist from El País, who specializes in society, health, bioethics and biomedicine.

The film will be screened in Finnish and English with Catalan subtitles.