Aki Kaurismäki is a Finnish film director, screenwriter and producer.
Background
Both Mika and Aki Kaurismäki spent their childhood and youth in different parts of Finland, and they had an early interest in film. They have both worked abroad in the 1990s, relying on multi-national finance and international casts. Aki Kaurismäki has been influenced by the French directors Jean-Pierre Melville and Robert Bresson.
Career
He started his film career as a co-director for his elder brother Mika Kaurismäki, and their co-operation has continued in their shared production company, Villealfa. In his independently directed and written films Aki Kaurismäki has proved to be a personality, whose minimalist style and whose subjects, arising from the Finnish soil, have made him an international cult figure.
In the late eighties and early nineties, the Kaurismäki brothers thrust Finnish movies onto the international festival scene. At first, Aki (a writer- director) worked closely with his older brother, Mika, but subsequently Aki established himself as the more productive. He has a refreshing passion for shorter films (often in the seventy-five-minute range), and he has the cool, dry, ironic affection for American culture that sometimes one sees in Godard. Kaurismäki can be very funny—so long as no one laughs.
His vein is not quite black humor, but a droll fatalism that marks the Finns as eternal spectators for the silliness of the world. He was most impressive with Ariel. The Match Faetón/ Girl, ami Leningrad Cowboys Go America, and he was fond of the road picture format. More recentlv he seems to have lost some edge, but in the earlv twenty-first century there is plentv of room available if his sardonic eye turned to politics.