20/07/2026 - Jukka Kärkkäinen finds tenderness, absurdity and hard-won acceptance inside a Finnish family whose fragile balance is disrupted by a son’s passage into adulthood

After receiving its international premiere at Thessaloniki and screening at Visions du Réel, Jukka Kärkkäinen’s The Beauty of Errors has had its Italian premiere in Giffoni Film Festival’s GexDoc strand. The Finnish-Norwegian-Swedish documentary centres on Tero, a single father who has raised his son Henri for 15 years, and on the uneasy transition that begins when the young man moves in with his girlfriend, Alina.

Kärkkäinen approaches this compellingly dysfunctional family with tact, refusing either to romanticise its members or to reduce them to their problems. Their household becomes a compressed portrait of emotional repression, generational conflict, depression, alienation and alcoholism, but also of the rigid family roles that allow affection to survive without necessarily being articulated. Feelings are buried until they erupt, often through arguments whose immediate causes appear trivial but whose deeper roots are painfully clear.

Without claiming this one family as being representative of an entire region, the film nevertheless taps into recognisable tensions within contemporary Nordic life: the distance between social modernity and private emotional conservatism, changing expectations of masculinity, and the awkwardness of relationships in which practical care still substitutes for direct expressions of love or vulnerability.

Henri’s relationship with Alina further unsettles an already precarious equilibrium. Tero experiences his son’s growing independence less as a natural step than as a kind of abandonment, whilst Henri increasingly struggles against the weight of his father’s dependence. Their conflict is plain, sometimes brutal, yet the film keeps both perspectives in view. Around them, Henri’s grandparents offer another model of companionship: worn, imperfect and occasionally exasperated, but deeply endearing.

Formally, The Beauty of Errors mirrors the emotional enclosure of its protagonists. Toni Pasanen’s precise compositions repeatedly place them within neat, boxed-in domestic spaces, suggesting lives that have become embedded in routines they can barely imagine escaping. Yet the imagery remains pristine and visually coherent, while Otto Heikola and Timo Peltonen’s editing maintains a careful rhythm, gradually drawing the viewer into this world, rather than forcing intimacy too quickly.

The score is equally well judged, moving between gloomier Finnish favourites and more openly uplifting songs. Katri Helena’s “Vasten auringon siltaa” and Erkki Junkkarinen’s “Kappale kauneinta Suomea” sit alongside international pop, including Foreigner’s “I Want to Know What Love Is”, without turning the characters’ emotions into easy cues.

Moreover, small comic touches keep the drama from becoming oppressive, loosely recalling Aki Kaurismäki's cinema. Some of these moments include family members swearing persistently, and a scene wherein father and son cut each other’s hair, making them briefly resemble medieval Franciscan friars. These glimpses never mock them; rather, they reveal the absurdity threaded through their pain.

Overall, the journey is skilfully built. We enter the family’s life on tiptoe, but despite its volatility, the space gradually becomes strangely familiar and even comfortable. Kärkkäinen’s conclusion is simple without being facile: every family accumulates errors, and beauty lies not in correcting them all, but in learning to accept enough of them to carry on. Friends can be chosen; relatives cannot, however difficult that fact may be.

The Beauty of Errors was produced by Mouka Films (Finland), Auto Images (Sweden), Indie Films (Norway) and Film i Skåne (Sweden). German sales agent Rise and Shine is in charge of its international rights.