Biography
Aki Kaurismäki was born in Orimattila on 4 April 1957 and studied literature and communications at the University of Tampere while working as an editor and critic for a film magazine. In 1980 he wrote his first screenplay for a film by his brother Mika, with whom he founded the production company Villealfa and the Midnight Sun Film Festival in Sodankylä. He made his directing debut in 1983 with an adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” set in present-day Helsinki; “Shadows in Paradise” (1986), “Ariel” (1988) and “The Match Factory Girl” (1990) formed his Proletariat Trilogy. Later films include “The Man Without a Past” (2002, Grand Prix at Cannes and an Academy Award nomination), “Le Havre” (2011), “The Other Side of Hope” (2017, Silver Bear for Best Director) and “Fallen Leaves” (2023, Jury Prize at Cannes). His films are marked by sparse dialogue, a largely static camera, dry deadpan humour and outsider characters, often in working-class Helsinki; several of them have been adapted for German-language stages, for instance at Schauspielhaus Bochum.
On Stagelog
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