Aki Kaurismäki
Date of Birth: Apr 4, 1957
Country: Finland
Biography: Aki Kaurismäki did a wide variety of jobs including postman, dish-washer and film critic, before forming a production and distribution company, Villealfa with his older brother Mika Kaurismäki. Both are prolific film-makers, and together have been responsible for one-fifth of the total output of the Finnish film industry since the early 80s. His films are very short, eccentric parodies of various genres and populated by lugubrious hard-drinking Finns and set to eclectic soundtracks.
Total Credits at Criticker: 8 (Actor), 29 (Director), 31 (Writer)
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Find more information about Aki Kaurismäki at The Internet Movie Database
Titles you haven't rated - Actor (8) | Director (29) | Writer (31)
Two lonely people who meet each other by chance in the Helsinki night and try to find the first love of their lives.
A poker-playing restaurateur and former traveling salesman befriends a group of refugees newly arrived from Finland. (imdb)
"Le Havre" tells the story of a shoeshiner who tries to save an immigrant child.
Chacun son cinéma ou Ce petit coup au coeur quand la lumière s'éteint et que le film commence (2007)
A collective film of 33 shorts directed by different directors about their feeling about Cinema. (imdb)
The Foundry (2007) - Short Film
Workers of a foundry eat their lunch and watch Lumiére brothers film Leaving the Factory (1895). (imdb)
In Helsinki, a lonely night watchman is caught up in a series of misadventures with a femme fatale and a crooked businessman. (imdb)
Bico (2004) - Short Film
A short 5 minutes film conceived as a segment of a collective work entitled Visions of Europe. In this documentary film, shoot under the sign of Strindberg's Inferno and the echoes of Las Hurdes, the line between tale and factual blurs, and we see fragments of stories emerging from under the rocks and Ruben's method achieves a degree of cinematic perfection. (ebscohost.com)
The second installation of Aki Kaurismäki's "Finland Trilogy," this touching and amusing film portrays a man who must start his life anew when he is brutally mugged and loses his memory. (Sony Pictures Classics)
Seven internationally respected filmmakers offer different perspectives on time and fate -- some witty, some somber -- in this omnibus film, with the stories linked by performances from jazz great Hugh Masekela.
A farmer's wife is seduced into running away from her stolid older husband by a city slicker, who enslaves her in a brothel. (imdb)
The recession hits a couple in Helsinki. (imdb)
This comedy is a sequel to Aki Kaurismaki's successful Leningrad Cowboys Go America. The Lennigrad Cowboys are billed as the "worst rock'n'roll band in the world." In the last film they went to the U.S. In this film they travel from Mexico back to Lennigrad. The story begins in Mexico... (All Movie Guide)
Lugubrious Finns Valto and Reino take to the road in search of coffee and vodka, without which their lives are not worth living. But their reveries are interrupted by the arrival of garrulous Russian Klaudia and Estonian Tatiana - who are clearly interested in the two men, despite the language barrier. But what are the chances of getting a response from men who prefer staring at vodka bottles to talking? (imdb)
A 57 minute documentary of a Helsinki concert featuring the Leningrad Cowboys and the Alexandrov Red Army Choir and Ballet, who collaborate on a number of US Rock songs sung in English (like "Sweet Home, Alabama") as well as more traditional Russian songs like the "Volga Boatman". (imdb)
Those Were the Days (1992) - Short Film
Paris, 1994, night: as the Leningrad Cowboys sing "Those were the days," a solitary man leading a donkey is turned away at a restaurant door. He and the beast walk down to La Maison du Vin where, despite a "no donkeys" sign on the wall, they enter and he proceeds to feed the donkey with provisions from his pack. His care and feeding of the donkey impress the woman who sings with the house band. She and the visitor connect, but if they slip away, who will watch the burro? (imdb)
These Boots (1992) - Short Film
These Boots tells "the Finnish history from 1952 to 1969" and begins with the birth of the main character (Mato Valtonen). This combination of a short film and a music video goes through the most important events of the main character's life (youtube.com)
After fifteen years' service, Henri Boulanger is made redundant from his job. Shocked, he attempts suicide... (imdb)
Iris has a dead-end job in a match-factory, lives with her dour and forbidding parents, and her social life is a disaster... (imdb)
The Leningrad Cowboys, a group of Finnish musicians, and their manager, travel to America seeking fame and fortune. As they cross the country, trying to get to a wedding in Mexico, they are followed by the village idiot, who wishes to join the band. (imdb)
Likaiset kädet (1989) - TV Movie
Kaurismäki's TV adaptation of Jean-Paul Sartre's play Les Mains Sales (Dirty Hands) tells the story of Hugo (Matti Pellonpää) who has just been released from prison. Before going to prison, he has worked as a journalist at his party's newspaper. This timid journalist, who uses the pseudonym Raskolnikov, wants to advance in his career and gets his chance when Hoederer (Sulevi Peltola), the leader of the party, has to be eliminated. (movielens)
The movie tells the story of Taisto Kasurinen, a finnish coal miner whose father has just committed suicide and who is framed for a crime he did not commit (imdb)
A bizarre black-and-white film noir reworking of Shakespeare's 'Hamlet'. After the death of his father, young Hamlet inherits a seat on the board of a company controlled by his uncle that decides to move into the rubber duck market. (imdb)
Thru the Wire (1987) - Short Film
Nicky escapes from prison somewhere between Alabama and Utah, sometime in the future. He looks for his girl in the bars and hotels. All he can see in his new freedom is that no one cares for the future of human culture. (imdb)
An episode in the life of Nikander, a garbage man, involving the death of a co-worker, an affair and much more. (imdb)
Rocky VI (1986) - Short Film
Definitely not to be confused with any of Sylvester Stallone's efforts, this is a wicked satire on 'Rocky IV', in which Rocky takes on the monolithic Russian fighter Igor - and loses. Kaurismaeki describes the film as "my revenge on Mr. Stallone, who I think is an asshole". (imdb)
An exodus to a better life in Eira (imdb)
An adaptation of Dostoyevsky's novel, updated to present-day Helsinki. Slaughterhouse worker Rahikainen murders a man, and is forced to live with the consequences of his actions... (imdb)
Jackpot 2 (1982) - Short Film
The film follows the lives of three young people, a young man, his fiancée and his best friend. After some unexplained disaster, Helsinki is virtually deserted, only a few residents remain and most of them are affected by the disaster. (eyeforfilm.co.uk)
A criminal, his friend and his former girlfriend find their lives intertwining with each other. (imdb)
Talkative, hyperactive young drifter Ville Alfa goes around Helsinki, basically trying to borrow money from friends and strangers by means of an incessant delivery of quirky and snappy quasi-intellectual lines and fabricated excuses. (imdb)