Milka – A Film About Taboos is a 1980 Finnish drama film directed by Rauni Mollberg. It was entered into the 31st Berlin International Film Festival.

Plot

Milka is a 14-year-old girl who lives with her mother in a tiny isolated community in Northern Finland. The girl misses her dead father and prays to God to show her what love is. The mother employs a man named Ojanen (and nicknamed "Christ-Devil") to help in the hay making. He stays in the house and courts both the mother and the daughter. Later he vanishes unexpectedly, and the mother, who wished to marry him, notices that Milka is pregnant by him.

Cast

Production

Director Rauni Mollberg used amateurs, including 17-year-old schoolgirl Irma Huntus, who was cast in the title role. Huntus appeared nude in several scenes, which made her life difficult in the small village where she returned after the filming was over. (Huntus never appeared in another dramatic film, but was interviewed in a documentary on Mollberg four decades later.) Helena Ylänen wrote in the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat that Mollberg had "unleashed his fascination with the white naked human flesh. He makes a number of excuses to undress people, in particular the undeveloped girl's body of Milka."