Von Bagh was never fully happy with Kohtaaminen – he felt that he hadn’t completely risen to the challenge, and that the film could have been better if he had worked longer on it instead of tossing it off. Not true: its simplicity combined with a sense of urgency is one of Kohtaaminen’s strengths. The film consists of merely two elements: footage of Adolf Hitler’s visit to Finland on the occasion of Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim’s 75th birthday on June 4th 1942, shot by the great director of photography Felix Forsman, and an interview with Forsman conducted decades later by von Bagh. Similar to Päivä Karl Marxin haudalla, it’s a small work created to commemorate an event that otherwise might have been tacitly forgotten, or dealt with more ‘rhetorically’. Besides that, it also functions as something of an entr’acte for two of his most important films, Viimeinen kesä 1944 and 1939.