The ideological Cold War began immediately after the end of World War II. The Soviet Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom effectively divided the world into Eastern and Western blocs. Berlin, split in two, became known as the “Nest of Spies,” serving as a hub where agents from both sides crossed paths. Yet some 1,600 kilometers away, neutral Finland also became strategically important to both Soviet and Western intelligence. Its capital, Helsinki, turned into another arena for espionage, where Eastern and Western agents tested each other’s resolve. This city and country played a pivotal role in this not-so-cold war—not only in reality, but also on the silver screen.
The threat posed by the Red Front and Soviet espionage was first captured by Eric Ambler in his 1937 novel Uncommon Danger, written nearly a decade before the Cold War began. In reality, spies on both sides had already been monitoring each other for years. Double agents and defectors soon became fixtures not only in intelligence operations but also in literature and film. One of the earliest and most notable examples was Igor Gouzenko, whose story was brought to the screen in The Iron Curtain (1948), with Dana Andrews portraying him.
Since the 1930s, Finland has been a key hub for espionage and a crossing point for agents fleeing the Soviet Union. After World War II, Finland managed to retain its independence by adopting a friendly policy toward Moscow. Relations were stable enough that in 1955, the Soviets even returned the Porkkala naval base. A few years later, the first joint cinematic production, Sampo (released internationally as The Day the Earth Froze), was made. Yet this collaboration never truly flourished; until the end of the Cold War, only a handful of other films followed, including Luottamus (Доверие, Trust) and Tulitikkuja lainaamassa (Borrowing Matchsticks). In contrast, Hollywood—unable to film inside the Soviet Union—turned to Finland, and especially Helsinki, in search of locations that could convincingly stand in for the USSR.
If we set aside Make Like a Thief (Juokse kuin varas), directed by Åke Lindman as an American-Finnish co-production, the first major film to use Finland’s natural landscapes to depict Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union was Doctor Zhivago (1965), directed by David Lean. Though primarily a U.S., British, and Italian production, parts of this wartime romance were filmed in Finland in locations such as Koli, Punkaharju, and frozen lakes—which convincingly stood in for Siberia—though not specifically Helsinki.
The first espionage film to set its story in Finland and Helsinki—and still considered one of the best examples of the genre—was Billion Dollar Brain (1967), directed by Ken Russell. It was the third installment in the adventures of Len Deighton’s Harry Palmer, the anti-hero spy portrayed by Michael Caine, following The Ipcress File (1965) and Funeral in Berlin (1966).
In the first two installments—deliberately downbeat alternatives to the hugely successful James Bond films—Harry Palmer was an MI5 agent, with the second story sending him to a divided Berlin. At the start of the third film, however, viewers learn that he has left MI5 to work as a private investigator. Hired via a mechanical voice over the phone, he is tasked with delivering a package to Helsinki. The package contains six virus-laden eggs stolen from a British government research facility, intended for use by oil tycoon General Midwinter in a plot to infect the Red Army. The General is planning a rebellion in Latvia, which he believes will trigger the collapse of Communism worldwide. The story takes a twist when Harry’s former MI5 superior, Colonel Ross, reappears and coerces him into once again working for the British government to unravel the conspiracy and recover the eggs. The film used Helsinki and Turku as shooting locations, with Porvoo standing in for Riga. It also offered a darkly humorous portrayal of Finland—its climate, culture, and distinctive features such as the sauna.
But this attitude did not last. By 1991, with the Cold War over, Helsinki—once a Russian Grand Duchy from 1809 until Finland’s independence—had become a stand-in for Soviet cities such as Moscow and Leningrad in Western films. This trend began with the use of Helsinki Cathedral[1] and Senate Square in the opening scene of The Kremlin Letter (1970), directed by John Huston, and continued with Telefon (1977), directed by Don Siegel.
The opening shot of Telefon features the Uspenski Cathedral[2], which immediately creates a Soviet atmosphere for viewers. More than Helsinki Cathedral, it carried a distinctly Russian character, evoking the cityscapes of Moscow—a deliberate choice to achieve that impression.
Four years later, in 1981, Senate Square stood in for St. Petersburg in the American epic historical drama Reds, directed by and starring Warren Beatty. To avoid revealing the Helsinki Cathedral, the film used a different angle of the square. Additional locations in Reds included Suomenlinna and central Helsinki streets such as Helenankatu and Unioninkatu.
The following year, Senate Square and Kanavakatu in Helsinki, along with Inari, Ivalo, and Kokkola, were used to create a Soviet atmosphere in the American TV biopic Coming Out of the Ice, directed by Waris Hussein. The film was based on Victor Herman’s[3] 1979 autobiography, which recounted his decades of imprisonment in the Soviet Gulag system.
This was followed in 1983 by Gorky Park, directed by Michael Apted and starring William Hurt and Lee Marvin. In this Cold War thriller, Helsinki once again stood in for Moscow.[4]
Sixteen years after his first cinematic trip to Helsinki, Michael Caine returned briefly to the city—this time to play double agent Sir Philip Charles Kimberley/Sergei Kuzminsky, a character inspired by British defector Kim Philby[5], in The Jigsaw Man.[6]
The film opens with a scene set in Russia, though it was actually filmed in Helsinki’s Market Square. The Orthodox church in the background is the Uspenski Cathedral, while the “Soviet office” is in fact the Swedish Embassy in Helsinki. In the distance, the corner of Finland’s Presidential Palace is also visible.
The Jigsaw Man faced a troubled production. Filming was halted due to financial problems and Sir Laurence Olivier’s illness, and the movie went straight to video two years after completion.[7]
The video release of The Jigsaw Man in 1985 coincided with the premiere of Taylor Hackford’s White Nights[8], a musical drama starring Russian-born dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov. Once a rising star with the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad, Baryshnikov had defected to Canada in 1974.
For White Nights, Hackford hired a Finnish travelogue film crew that had previously worked in the Soviet Union to capture scenes in Leningrad. They filmed landmarks such as the Kirov Theatre, the Lenin monument, and a Chaika state limousine. These shots—including several in-car scenes—were later inserted into the movie. Hackford expressed disappointment with critics who assumed the footage had been filmed in Helsinki and criticized the film on that basis.
In White Nights, Helsinki stood in for Leningrad and Moscow, while Pori’s Reposaari doubled as a small Siberian village. Decades later, in September 2017, the sets at Reposaari were reconstructed and photographed for Taylor Hackford’s biography.
Finally, in 1988, Hollywood filmmakers were granted permission to shoot in the Soviet Union. Walter Hill’s Red Heat—the story of a tough Russian policeman forced to team up with a brash Chicago detective to capture a Georgian drug lord—was among the first. While the film included establishing shots from Moscow’s Red Square, many of the Moscow scenes were actually filmed in Hungary, with Budapest doubling for the Soviet capital. By then, Helsinki’s role as Moscow’s stand-in had essentially come to an end.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War in 1991, Senate Square was finally able to appear in its original role for the first time in a non-Finnish production. For Finns, the square has long been a symbol of patriotism, class struggle, and public celebration.
It wasn’t just Senate Square, however—all of Helsinki appeared as itself in a film by acclaimed American director Jim Jarmusch. His episodic work Night on Earth (1991) is a collection of five vignettes, each set in a different city—Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome, and Helsinki—unfolding roughly at the same time on a single night. Each story revolves around the fleeting connection between a taxi driver and a passenger.
In the bitterly cold Helsinki episode, featuring actors familiar from Aki Kaurismäki’s films, a weary cabbie tells a heartbreaking tale to his three drunken passengers. By the end, two of them decide their newly sacked friend—barely able to stand—is not so unfortunate after all, and they abandon him to his fate.
Jarmusch’s portrayal of Helsinki was so authentic that it even drew praise from Finnish critic and historian Peter von Bagh:
Jarmusch has captured admirably the aroma of Chekhovian silences, the Finnish kind—the absolute miserableness of a milieu and its individual stories… Jarmusch’s experience of Helsinki is a small miracle to me. He shows us things that no Finnish film has ever thought of, and yet, by a strange intuition, he almost provides a synthesis of the sense of Finnish film and its history. Which, by the way, is not at all as negligible as its lack of international reputation would indicate.[9]
Although all of the vignettes take place mostly in taxis, Jarmusch used multiple locations for the Helsinki segment, effectively taking viewers on a near-complete tour of the city. The route stretches from Tehtaankatu to Havis Amanda, Sörnäisten Rantatie, Lintulahdenkuja, Vanajantie, Keuruuntie, Mäkelänkatu, and finally Suvannontie—not to mention the central railway station, whose clock tower also appears on one of the film’s posters.
Since the 1990s, Western film crews have enjoyed greater access to shooting locations in Russia and across the former Iron Curtain. Yet even with real locations more readily available than in the 1970s and 1980s, filming on site has not always been practical due to cost and labor. In The Jackal (1997), directed by Michael Caton-Jones, Helsinki once again substituted for Moscow, with neighborhoods such as Tehtaankatu, Kapteeninkatu, and Valkosaari—whose Soviet-style architecture looked convincing enough on screen—standing in for the Russian capital.
It seems fitting to end with another spy film—this one made after the Cold War by a Finnish director and shot almost entirely in Helsinki. The Finnish–U.S. co-production Spy Games (1999)[10], directed by Ilkka Järvi-Laturi and starring Bill Pullman, Irène Jacob, and Bruno Kirby, remains an underrated entry in the genre.[11]
The story follows Harry, a jaded CIA agent, and Natasha, a young SVR operative—formerly with the KGB—as they struggle to protect both the world and their secret romance in post-Cold War Helsinki. Their personal and professional lives intertwine smoothly—until satellite access codes are hidden on a pornographic videotape and smuggled into Finland for transmission to the SVR.
Spy Games plays as a satire of a bygone era. Harry’s only assignment is measuring radioactivity in reindeer, while Natasha’s sole mission is filing reports on Harry back to Russia. The film brims with comic moments and clever twists—like hiding vital data in a porn tape—and at times recalls John Landis’s 1985 comedy Spies Like Us.
Yet the actions of Max Fisher (Bruno Kirby) and Dave Preston (Glenn Plummer), who attempt to exploit the situation for their own gain, suggest that little has really changed. Although Harry tells Natasha’s superior, Ivan Bliniak (Udo Kier), “The Cold War is long over. It’d be stupid if we ended up as casualties after the fact,” Ivan remains convinced that “Russia will rise again.” The film closes with the sense that a new Cold War is taking shape—one that should not be underestimated.
And perhaps Helsinki—and Finland—will once again find themselves drawn into the unfolding geopolitical drama, not only as backdrops for stories told on the screen, but also as active stages where history and cinema continue to intersect.
[1] Designed by architect Carl Ludvig Engel; later modified by Ernst Lohrmann.
[2] Designed by architect Aleksey Gornostaev.
[3] Victor Herman (1915–1985) was a Jewish-American who spent 18 years in the Siberian Gulags. At age 16, he moved with his family to the Soviet Union, where they fell victim to Stalin’s purges. Briefly celebrated as the “Lindbergh of Russia” for setting a world parachute record in 1934, Herman was accused of espionage, arrested in 1938, and imprisoned after refusing to adopt Soviet citizenship. Released in 1956, he remained trapped in the USSR for two more decades, working various jobs while struggling to reclaim his U.S. citizenship. He was finally allowed to return to America in 1976.
[4] Key shooting locations included Kaisaniemi Park (as Gorky Amusement Park), Seurasaaren silta, and Yrjönkadun uimahalli.
[5] A fictionalized Philby is also killed in the opening scenes of Caine’s The Fourth Protocol (1987).
[6] When the project was first announced in 1976 with Mike Hodges directing, Philby reportedly objected to Caine’s casting, preferring Trevor Howard to play him.
[7] It was the fourth and final collaboration between Michael Caine and Laurence Olivier, following Battle of Britain, Sleuth, and A Bridge Too Far.
[8] The title referred to the sunlit summer nights of Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg), located just below the Arctic Circle, where much of the film was set.
[9] Night on Earth: Last Stop, Helsinki, The Criterion Collection.
[10] Released in some countries as History Is Made at Night.
[11] Spy Games was bilingual and featured Finnish actors such as Kati Outinen, Linda Zilliacus, Jevgeni Haukka, Henry Saari, Kari Väänänen, and Kimmo Eloranta in supporting roles.