Aki Kaurismäki

Birthday: 1957-04-04
Birthplace: Orimattila, Finland
Gender: Male

Aki Olavi Kaurismäki (Finnish: [ˈɑki ˈkɑu̯rismæki]; born 4 April 1957; Orimattila) is a Finnish film director, screenwriter, producer, editor and actor. He is best known for the award-winning Drifting Clouds (1996), The Man Without a Past (2002), Le Havre (2011), The Other Side of Hope (2017) and Fallen Leaves (2023), as well as for the mockumentary Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989). He is described as Finland's best-known film director. He is an older brother to Mika Kaurismäki.

After graduating in media studies from the University of Tampere, Kaurismäki worked as a bricklayer, postman, and dish-washer, long before pursuing his interest in cinema, first as a critic, and later as a screenwriter & director. He started his career as a co-screenwriter and actor in films made by his older brother, Mika Kaurismäki. He played the main role in Mika's film The Liar (1981). Together they founded the production company Villealfa Filmproductions and later the Midnight Sun Film Festival. His debut as an independent director was Crime and Punishment (1983), an adaptation of Dostoyevsky's novel set in modern Helsinki. He gained worldwide attention with Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989).

Kaurismäki's film Ariel (1988) was entered into the 16th Moscow International Film Festival where it won the Prix FIPRESCI. Kaurismäki's most acclaimed film has been The Man Without a Past, which won the Grand Prix and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Foreign Language Film category in 2003. However, Kaurismäki refused to attend the Oscar ceremony, asserting that he did not feel like partying in a country that was in a state of war. Kaurismäki's next film Lights in the Dusk was also chosen to be Finland's nominee for best foreign-language film, but Kaurismäki again boycotted the awards and refused the nomination, as a protest against U.S. President George W. Bush's foreign policy. In 2002 Kaurismäki also boycotted the 40th New York Film Festival in a show of solidarity with the Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, who was not given a US visa in time for the festival. Kaurismäki's 2017 film The Other Side of Hope won the Silver Bear for Best Director award at the 67th Berlin International Film Festival. At the same festival he also announced that it would be his last film, although the retirement was short-lived as he began filming Fallen Leaves in 2022, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023.

Credits

Year Title
2023-09-14 Fallen Leaves
2017-02-03 The Other Side of Hope
2013-03-06 Bluesia Pieksämäen asemalla
2012-11-10 Historic Centre
2012-11-09 Tavern Man
2011-09-08 Le Havre
2007-10-31 To Each His Own Cinema
2006-02-03 Lights in the Dusk
2004-05-01 Visions of Europe
2004-01-04 Bico
2002-05-18 Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet
2002-03-01 The Man Without a Past
1999-02-26 Juha
1996-01-26 Drifting Clouds
1994-05-06 Total Balalaika Show
1994-02-17 Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses
1994-01-14 Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatjana
1992-02-27 La Vie de Bohème
1990-10-12 I Hired a Contract Killer
1990-01-12 The Match Factory Girl
1989-10-05 Dirty Hands
1989-03-24 Leningrad Cowboys Go America
1988-10-21 Ariel
1987-08-21 Hamlet Goes Business
1986-10-17 Shadows in Paradise
1986-06-14 Rocky VI
1985-02-08 Calamari Union
1983-12-02 Crime and Punishment
1981-09-11 The Saimaa Gesture