- Surrealistic imagery frames this true Depression-era story about Finnish homesteader Tom Sukanen, institutionalized after a decade spent single-handedly building a steamship on the Canadian prairie.
- "some dreams don't die with the dreamer"
On a spring morning in 1943, Finnish shipwright Tom Sukanen wakes from deep, strange dreams in a mental hospital in Saskatchewan, Canada. Hovering in the dreamlike world between this life and the next, Sukanen watches his life play out on the white walls of his room, and leaves his bed to travel back in time through dusty memories.
'Sisu' is based on the true story of Tom Sukanen, who in 1912 left his young family in Minnesota to build a better life for them in Canada. But just as he was preparing to bring his family to the homestead he had spent several years building, his wife and son died, and his remaining children were taken by the authorities. Soon thereafter, the remnants of Sukanen's Canadian dream were torn away by the Depression and dust storms. In his grief, the genius inventor, artist and engineer either spiraled into a desperate madness - or was inflamed by divine inspiration. For ten years he immersed himself in the single-handed fabrication of an incredible ocean-going steam and sailing ship on his prairie homestead over a thousand miles from the ocean, with a fantastic dream of floating her 1200 miles down the Saskatchewan River to Hudson Bay, and piloting her home to Finland.
Layering surreal imagery and animation over live action footage, 'Sisu' projects Sukanen's poetic passion onto the starkly beautiful Depression-era Canadian prairies.
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Top Gap
By what name was Sisu: The Death of Tom Sukanen (2009) officially released in Canada in English?
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