The Winter War (1989) movie was made freely viewable by Finnish National Audiovisual Institute (KAVI) as remastered 4K version with English subtitles.
Link to movie:
https://www.finna.fi/Record/kavi.elonet_elokuva_126330?lng=en-gb
Finna maintains cultural and scientific content of numerous organizations in Finland.
See movie description and reviews in Amazon.
Background
Winter War movie describes the Winter War (between Finland and Soviet Union in 1939-1940) from perspective of one infantry unit. It is based on experiences of company (JR23) assembled of men who lived in Kauhava, in Finland.
The movie begins with mobilization phase (13.10.1939), which starts at Kauhava and continues with travelling to Carelian Isthmus (in south east corner near Leningrad (currently St. Petersburg)). During the negotiations troops spent time on fortification and also helping locals.
The war started on 30.11.1939 and the Carelian Isthmus was area where Finland has main defense line, and where Soviet Union put a lot of pressure, because breaking the defense there would have paved the way to capital Helsinki.
Winter War is not a Hollywood style story of heroes, but it’s brutal story about men, who had to leave their home to defend their home country against well known and overwhelming enemy.
In Winter War units were assembled from men coming from same town. It means that men (especially from smaller places) already knew each other and knew their commanders too. It had pros, but on the other hand it lead to tragedies for certain towns. Some units ended up in worse fronts and situations than others, so some small towns suffered huge losses.
Assembling rifleman units primarily from small country towns just emphasized this. In Continuation War troops were assembled differently. Every town has their own “sankarihautausmaa” (“cemetery of heroes”). See the pictures in WarSampo: https://www.sotasampo.fi/en/cemeteries/list
The movie is based on novel written by Finnish author Antti Tuuri. Events in many or most of Tuuri’s novels happen in Southern Ostrobothnia area of Finland. For this novel Tuuri studied the history and interviewed numerous veterans on Winter War. The movie was released on 50th anniversary of Winter War on 30.11.1989 and it’s 15th on list of most watched movies in theaters in Finland.
More to read
Wikipedia: Winter War
William R. Trotter: The Winter War – Russo-Finnish war in 1939-1940
More to watch
Surprisingly, there are no other true war movies made of Winter War. There are several movies made of Continuation War (1941-1945) though.
Finnish author Väinö Linna wroted Unknown Soldier, which is literature classic in Finland, in 1954 and it’s been filmed three times. The latest version was made in 2017 and is truly a great movie. It’s available in HBO Max in Europe as 5 part mini series and the movie can be found also from Amazon.
Unknown Soldier
Other notable movies are: