Live, Love, Laugh - A Hundred Years of Wisdom

Finland's oldest generation rarely gets to speak for itself, at least not like this. In this documentary series, Finns aged 94 to 106 sit down for intimate, unguarded conversations about the lives they have actually lived.

The subjects are survivors of war, but the series pointedly does not ask about war. Instead, it asks about love, sex, grief, friendship, jealousy, and joy. The answers are candid, often surprising, and consistently human. One 98-year-old reflects on the necessity of experiencing everything, sorrows included. A centenarian talks about keeping time enjoyable, because so little of it remains. Others discuss long-buried pain, late-life romance, parents lost to mental illness, and friendships that have outlasted almost everything else.

The series quietly challenges social assumptions about what elderly people are permitted to discuss. Its subjects have no interest in being decorous or limited. Several of them, the programme makes clear, are living with more vitality and curiosity than people half their age.

Directed by Laura Satimus and Pertti Neuvonen from a concept by Teppo Similä, the series spans two seasons and was produced by Yle. Its intimacy comes from the trust each subject places in the camera, and from what they choose, at this stage of life, to say.