Ei koskaan yksin / Never Alone

Klaus Härö: Ei koskaan yksin / Never Alone (FI 2024) with Ville Virtanen (Abraham Stiller) and Rony Herman (Georg Kollmann). © MRP Matila Röhr Productions Oy

Aldrig ensam / Sa pole üksi.

    FI/SE/EE/AT/DE © 2025 MRP Matila Röhr Productions Oy / Samsara Filmproduktion GmbH / Taska Film OÜ / Penned Pictures GmbH / Hobab. P: Ilkka Matila.

    D: Klaus Härö. SC: Jimmy Karlsson - based on: Rony Smolar: Setä Stiller: Valpon ja Gestapon välissä [Uncle Stiller: Between Valpo* and Gestapo] (2003). Special acknowledgement: Elina Sana**. Finnish dialogue: Antti Tuuri. German dialogue: Magnus Mariuson. Cin: Robert Nordström. AD: Jaagup Roomet. Cost: Eugen Tamberg. Makeup: Valerie Rossacher. VFX supervisor: Saku Partamies (VFX Helsinki). M: Matti Bye. S: Simon Proksch. ED: Tambet Tasuja. Adviser on Finnish Jewish life: Rony Smolar. 

    C: Ville Virtanen (Abraham Stiller), Nina Hukkinen (Vera Stiller), Kari Hietalahti (Arno Anthoni), Hannu-Pekka Björkman (Väinö Tanner), Rony Herman (Georg Kollmann), Naemi Latzer (Janka Kollmann), Peter Kanerva (etsivä Kauhanen), Carl-Kristian Rundman (Toivo Horelli), Tomi Salmela (poliisipäällikkö Ryynänen), Lukas Walcher (German officer), Alexander Jagsch (Heinrich Müller), Satu Tuuli Karhu (toimittaja [Elina Sana]), Max Bremer (K. A. Fagerholm), Jouko Puolanto (Jukka Rangell), suomenhevonen/Finnhorse Veikko.

    Languages: Finnish, Swedish, Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian, German, English.

    85 min

    International sales: The Playmaker.

    Previews: 11 Nov 2024, 9 Jan 2025 etc. (limited).

    Festival premiere: 13 Nov 2024 Black Nights Film Festival, Tallinn.

    Swedish festival premiere: 30 Jan 2025 Göteborg Film Festival.

    Premiere in Finland: 17 Jan 2025 (wide) - distributed by Oy Nordisk Film Ab - subtitles n.c.

    Viewed on Sunday 18 May 2025 at Tennispalatsi, Salomonkatu 15, 00100 Helsinki

* Valpo = Valtiollinen poliisi / Statspolisen = State Police.

** Elina Sana (previously Elina Suominen): Kuoleman laiva S/S Hohenhörn : juutalaispakolaisten kohtalo Suomessa [The Ship of Death S/S Hohenhörn : the Fate of Jewish Refugees in Finland] (1979). - Luovutetut : Suomen ihmisluovutukset Gestapolle [The Extradited : Finland's Extraditions to Gestapo] (2003). - Zavidovo-vuoto ja muita järkytyksiä [The Zavidovo Leak and Other Shocks] (2022).

Pimedate Ööde Filmifestival 2024: "28th Black Nights Film Festival

Programme: Baltic Film Competition

Genre: historical drama

Subject: individual vs society, politics

Klaus Härö brings to life the inspiring humanitarian efforts of Abraham Stiller in this gripping film.

Partly filmed in Estonia, with costumes by Eugen Tamberg and production design by Jaagup Roomet, this thrilling historical drama tells the lesser-known story of Abraham Stiller's struggle to protect Jews from deportation to the Nazis. Stiller, a Finnish Jewish businessman, did everything in his power to help the Jewish refugees seeking shelter in Finland.

While Finland remains unoccupied during the Second World War, some officials and cabinet ministers want to appease the Nazis by dealing with the so-called 'Jewish question'. Many Jewish refugees who have come to Finland in search of a better future find themselves facing the same problems as before. The kind but outspoken Abraham speaks out to protect the asylum seekers, but suddenly finds himself torn between his personal life and his politics, his emotions and his reason.

Estonian editor Tambet Tasuja dynamically cuts a gripping narrative, alternating between the perspective of guilt-ridden Abraham in 1972 and flashbacks to key events in 1938 and 1941-42." Edvinas Pukšta (Pimedate Ööde Filmifestival 2024)

Göteborg Film Festival 2025: Förtätat historiskt drama om mod, civilkurage och en kamp för mänsklighet i andra världskrigets skugga.

Under fortsättningskriget allierade sig Finland med Nazityskland mot den gemensamma fienden Sovjetunionen. Fram till dess hade många judiska flyktingar sökt sig till Finland för att undkomma förföljelser, men i och med militäralliansen började situationen förändras. För den finsk-judiske affärsmannen Abraham Stiller (imponerande gestaltad av Ville Virtanen) var utvecklingen ytterst oroande och i Aldrig ensam skildras hans obevekliga kamp för att skydda judiska flyktingar från deportation. Festivalbekanta Klaus Härö (Fäktaren GFF 2016, One Last Deal GFF 2019) har skapat ett angeläget och engagerande porträtt av en man som trots sina uppoffringar plågades av de liv han inte lyckades rädda." - Tobias Åkesson (Göteborg Film Festival 2025)

AA: The saga of Finnish Jews during the Holocaust is exceptional and unique. Finland was the only country in Germany's sphere of influence where not a single Jewish citizen perished in the Holocaust. 

Finland fought in the Operation Barbarossa (the invasion of Russia), the largest and deadliest land war in history, and there were 200.000 Wehrmacht troops in Finland. Finland also participated in the Waffen-SS via a Volunteer Battalion in Ukraine and the Caucasus Front. 

On Finland's Eastern Front operated the sole field synagogue on this side of the war, and a German soldier was obliged to salute a Jewish officer.

This saga has been told in the cinema in Taru Mäkelä's outstanding documentary film David - Tales of Honour and Shame (FI 1997).

Klaus Härö's Never Alone, based on Rony Smolar's excellent book Setä Stiller: Valpon ja Gestapon välissä [Uncle Stiller: Between Valpo and Gestapo], tells about Abraham Stiller's efforts to save Jewish refugees from deportation to the Nazis.

The focus is on the case of eight refugees who were deported from Helsinki to Tallinn and further to Auschwitz in November 1942. A detail in the Holocaust, but a turning-point in Finnish history. 

On the one hand, a story of a failure, a disgraceful outcome of the Gestapo mentality in the Finnish State Police, previously discussed in the cinema in Jörn Donner's The Interrogation (FI 2009), one of his best films, with Mikko Reitala as Arno Anthoni and Marcus Groth as Paavo Kastari. Hannu-Pekka Björkman, Härö's Väinö Tanner, appears as the Valpo interrogator Toivo Suominen in Donner's movie.

On the other hand, a story of a victory: the outrage around the deportation was so great that it made the existence of the Finnish Jewish community safer. However, some 200 Jewish prisoners-of-war were turned to the Nazis. And Finland, in contrast to Sweden, never became a safe haven for Jewish refugees.

Never Alone is the ninth movie of Klaus Härö whose career started with Elina: As If I Wasn't There (2002). It received the Ingmar Bergman Prize (Bergman himself giving the decisive vote and writing the justification). All Härö's films matter. He often discusses touchy subjects in recent Nordic and Baltic history. One could call him a profoundly Christian artist. My favourite film of his is Letters to Father Jacob (FI 2009).

In Never Alone, Härö turns to the Jewish world, portraying Abraham Stiller as an outsider-insider in the small Jewish community of Finland. Stiller is always a benefactor and lifeline to the refugees who call him "Uncle Stiller". Abraham risks his life on a journey to faraway Lapland, the Salla-Kemijärvi railroad construction site, to help refugees who toil in concentration camp circumstances by the frontline of the 6. SS-Gebirgs-Division Nord.

Abraham Stiller's story is a study in chutzpah (Yiddish for audacity, cheek, insolence). Stiller is a gentle man, but he has the balls to speak truth to Nazi power. All his life he regrets that he did not achieve more, but the case of the eight refugees (of whom only one, Georg Kollmann, survived Auschwitz) was a victory in defeat, because it reversed the course of Jewish persecution in Finland.

Klaus Härö tells the story in a sober manner, which is the right way. The truth is so outrageous that it does not need embellishing.

But I was also asking myself the Billy Wilder question: "How would Lubitsch do it?" The Stiller family is known for its bigger-than-life characters, including Abraham's brother Mauritz Stiller, whose masterpiece Erotikon gave Lubitsch an inspiration for his 1920s comedies. I am also thinking about the memoirs of the Finnish Jews Boris Grünstein (En jude i Finland: galghumoristiska berättelser, 1988) and Herbert Gumpler (Itse plus Gumpler: rikosjuristin muistoja, 1996) where they discuss how they navigated in the toxic atmosphere of Nazi Europe with bravado.

...

Every Finn should see this film and read Rony Smolar's book. I read it from cover to cover on the day it was published, and inspired by Klaus Härö's movie I reread it. It is full of alarming facts and details. I would like to know the answers to many of its questions, such as what was the fate of the confiscated fortune of the deported businessman Elias Kopelowsky.

Der Feldzug im Osten (DE 1942). The official propaganda film of Operation Barbarossa was released in a special Finnish version. The title Never Alone refers to the Nie allein poster celebrating the German-Finnish Waffenbrüderschaft. I hope to access the poster that I do not remember having seen before Klaus Härö's film.