San Diego International Film Festival 2025
Middle-aged sisters Taina and Paivi, famous in their Finnish village for making a traditional beer called ‘sahti’ via old family recipes, are hired to provide all the drink for a friends’ wedding, only to have to scramble to find replacements when in celebration they drink it all beforehand!
You wouldn’t think a foreign-language film about the goods and bads that come with drinking a lot of alcohol, like way way too much, would end up being a heartfelt comedy that is almost slapstick at times, and still comes off as poignant and happy-sad in the end, but here it is. Try and stick to just three fingers of sahti this time okay honey, and let’s dive into this!
So Taina (Pirjo Lonka) and Paivi (Ria Kataja) are sisters who brew sahti in their barn via ancient family methods the same way their ancestors did, with treasured implements handed down through the family via their father, who is himself a champion sahti maker and the one the sisters go to to give a rating number for their latest batch. Taina was involved in a bad car accident some time ago and still has nightmares from it, combating them somewhat through mosaic art she displays … in their garage. While Paivi is blunt and large and generally uninterested in things unless they involve her sister and making more sahti. And when a good friend of the sisters, a friend who lost a leg due to being in the same car accident affecting Taina, hires the sisters to provide all the sahti for her upcoming wedding, they’re thrilled and working hard to make a batch that is a solid rated 10 from their father. Problems begin to arise when the sisters, who finish the wedding batch of sahti early to their delight, celebrate harder than pledge week at a frat and find they and their fellow celebrants drank it alllll!
Everyone in the village, from the rival cousin who makes his own sahti to the town priest for petes sake, loves the sisters’ sahti, and at the same time, takes advantage of their good nature by taking their booze and deferring their payments. Which means the first thing the sisters need to do, after fortifying with a morning drink or three of course, is to go around and collect all their lax payments so they might be able to afford a bunch of liters of other sahti – just as soon as they can find it. Most people are willing to pay up, and anyone that gives the sisters grief is met roundly by Taina’s biting sarcasm and Paivi’s heavy fists, if need be. So, with funds in hand and Paivi’s would-be boyfriend acting as chauffeur, the sisters hurry off to find whatever other sahti they can either buy or outright steal, as the clock to the wedding counts down!
Even after finding sahti to buy, or yes outright steal, the sisters can never seem to hang onto it. The bottom of a lake, the poop-splashed back of a truck, hidden under picnic tables at some sort of religious ceremony, none of it can slow down the sisters as they scurry from place to place, determined to have sahti for their friends wedding.
In the midst of all this running about, family secrets begin to bubble to the surface, bursting the idyllic life the sisters have together. It becomes overwhelmingly clear that Paivi’s continuous drinking, while amusing for the first act or so of the movie, is actually a serious problem, and needs to be addressed before she flat dies from it. And the only person who can save her sister from herself, is poor beleaguered sister Taina. Who loves her sister so very much, but also has to at some point choose to look after her own mental and physical health too, which means making hard choices and sticking to them. Hence the happy-sad ending.
Raise a glass of your favorite spirits in celebration, but not too much, for 100 Liters of Gold!
Reviewed by Alicia Glass