Ruthless Times – Songs of Care

Prosperous Finland is facing hard times—though the issues at play there are by no means confined to Finland. An increasingly aging society is putting great pressure on the health care system, which has been privatized according to a capitalist revenue model—or rather a loss model, because there are simply more elderly people in need than the system can handle. The gap is growing between supply and demand, between costs and benefits. Burned-out and underpaid caregivers are leaving the sector.

Director Susanna Helke has found an unorthodox form to depict this crisis. Interviews are combined with poignant examples of health care practice, in which care robots and remote care are suggested as cost-saving solutions. These are punctuated by musical interludes, in which groups of nurses and warmly dressed elderly people sing songs based on anonymous letters of complaint by nursing care staff.

They express despair, and anger, because care for the elderly has become a question of economics, where ethics and hardcore capitalism collide. The right to spend the final years of your life in dignity has become unaffordable.