From India With Love TM
Finland Edition
From India With LoveTM
Documentary Film
Finland Edition
Logline
Six Finns, each affected by stress or trauma, travel across India on an unscripted journey to explore how trust and belonging can be rebuilt, and how those lessons can be brought back to everyday life in Finland.
The Challenge
Finland is often seen as the happiest country in the world and widely admired for safety, strong education and high institutional trust. Yet beneath those strengths, challenges persist – loneliness, burnout, domestic violence, youth disconnection, substance-related harm and growing polarization. These are not isolated problems but symptoms of trust under pressure — stress, trauma, shame and fear accumulating in families, schools and communities.
- What does nonviolence look like when trust is under pressure at home, in the community, and in the body?
- How can we harmoniously coexist amidst our differences?
An Unscripted Documentary Film
From India With Love™ Finland Edition follows six diverse Finns who share a common quest and along the way, explore where healing begins and learn practical methods to bring back into their everyday and professional lives. Here, nonviolence is approached as a trainable, embodied capacity. Breath, co-regulation, and restorative practices can strengthen the ability to pause, repair, and stay present under pressure.
Participants may include: an educator close to burnout, a single parent struggling to reconnect with a screen-absorbed teenager, a survivor of domestic violence (or close family member), a successful athlete navigating pressure and emotional restraint, a young digital creator seeking a responsible public voice, an immigrant keen to build belonging across cultures.
During the journey, participants confront long-held personal wounds and discover their shared humanity.
The Journey Across India
Guided by peacebuilder Mandar Apte, the journey begins in an ashram in Bengaluru where they learn profound yoga, breath and meditation practices. In the ashram kitchen, they learn to prepare simple plant-based meals sourced from nearby farms, learning that food, land, and community are inseparable. Ayurveda therapies remind them that the body is not a machine but part of a larger ecology.
From here they travel to Kolkata to experience healing through art, music, and collective devotion. The journey continues to Guwahati, where the group visits Kamakhya Temple — a site that symbolically honors the regenerative force of feminine energy. Without imposing belief, participants are invited to reflect on what it means for a culture to treat fertility, earth, and water as sacred.
From there, they ferry to Majuli Island, where the indigenous Mising community lives in close rhythm with the Brahmaputra river. Homes are raised on stilts to accommodate floods. Festivals follow seasonal cycles. Sacred groves are protected as living guardians. The Finns sit with local indigenous elders who speak of land not as property, but as ancestor. They observe small rituals at the riverbank — offerings of flowers, moments of bowed silence — simple acts that acknowledge water as life-giver.
The journey concludes with a closing dialogue on happiness and trust developed in partnership with local Finnish and Indian institutional stakeholders, where the Finns share their experience in India and invite Indian educators and community leaders to continue the exchange in Finland, strengthening trust through shared exchange initiatives.
Through small-group work and field encounters the group visits dense urban communities, rural and indigenous settings rooted in natural cycles, restorative-practice centres, and spaces of ritual and reflection. All sequences involving vulnerability will be co-designed with local partners. Filming will take place only with informed consent, trauma-sensitive protocols, and access to interpreters and on-site support when needed.
Beyond the Film: Creating Ripple Effects
From India With Love™ Finland Edition will be produced as a feature-length documentary film (60-90 min). Alongside the film, the project will also create six short thematic films (around each participant of approx. 10 min) and supporting materials that deepen social impact. Themes may include promoting compassion, mental wellbeing, belonging, and trust in individuals and communities. These materials will be developed with Finnish partners for use in schools, municipalities, NGOs, and other community-based settings.
At a time when Finland is looking for ways to strengthen human connection in everyday life, the film offers a reminder that peace and social cohesion do not come from policy alone. They are built and practiced between people, one encounter at a time.
Join us
This documentary is an invitation to a wider conversation about how trust, compassion, and belonging can be strengthened at a time when all three are increasingly under strain.
Our Team
Our Team
Our Partners
We are grateful to our collaborators and well wishers for supporting our endeavor.
