Aki Kaurismäki

Aki Olavi Kaurismäki was born in Orimattila on 4 April 1957. His older brother, Mika, is also a filmmaker. He grew up in Karkkila and graduated with a degree in media studies from the University of Tampere, but did not pursue a career in film immediately; he instead went to work as a bricklayer, dish washer, and postman. His first foray into the film world was as a critic.

Kaurismäki started his career as a co-writer and actor in films made by his brother Mika. He played the main role in Mika's film The Liar (1981). They co-founded the production company Villealfa Filmproductions and the Midnight Sun Film Festival.

Kaurismäki's directorial debut was Crime and Punishment (1983), an adaptation of the Dostoyevsky novel set in modern Helsinki. He gained worldwide attention with Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989). In 1992, New York Times film critic Vincent Canby declared him "an original, one of cinema's most distinctive and idiosyncratic new artists, and possibly one of the most serious" and said he "could well turn out to be the seminal European filmmaker of the '90s". He has since gone to make films such as Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989), Drifting Clouds (1996), The Man Without a Past (2002), Le Havre (2011), The Other Side of Hope (2017), and Fallen Leaves (2023). He has been described as Finland's most famous film director.

Kaurismäki and his wife Paula Oinonen have lived in Lisbon since 1989. He said they moved to Portugal because "in all of Helsinki there is no place left where [he] could place [his] camera", though he has since continued to set his films in Helsinki. His brother Mika also moved to Portugal with his Brazilian wife in the mid-2010s after nearly 30 years in Brazil, but they returned to Finland in 2019.

Kaurismäki co-owns a complex in Helsinki called Andorra, which features a cinema, several bars, and a pool hall with a giant poster of Robert Bresson's L'Argent and the jukebox from Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses. In 2021, he opened a cinema called Kino Laika in his hometown of Karkkila, which was the subject of the documentary Cinéma Laika by Croatian-French director Veljko Vidak.

The political context of Kaurismäki's work is highly influenced by his attitude to Finland's treatment of the working class. In his view, the social and political ramifications of class structures and lack of economic parity render lower-class workers replaceable cogs in an outdated machine.

Kaurismäki has criticised Finland's strict immigration policy. When Iraqi refugees arrived in Finland, he said many people in the country "perceived that as an attack, like a war". He was alarmed by their reaction and decided to make a film, The Other Side of Hope, in an effort to "change the Finns' attitude". He later said of German chancellor Angela Merkel's open-door refugee policy, "I respect Mrs. Merkel. She is the only politician who seems to be at least interested in the problem." In a 2007 interview with film scholar Andrew Nestingen, he said, "The real disgrace here is Finland's refugee policy, which is shameful. We refuse refugee status on the flimsiest of grounds and send people back to 'secure' places like Darfur, Iraq, and Somalia. [We say] 'It's perfectly safe, go ahead.' Our policy is a stain among the Nordic nations. Shameful."

In December 2019, along with 42 other leading cultural figures, Kaurismäki signed an open letter endorsing the British Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership in the 2019 general election. The letter stated that "Labour's election manifesto under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership offers a transformative plan that prioritises the needs of people and the planet over private profit and the vested interests of a few".

In May 2023, Kaurismäki spoke out against the potential entry of Finland into NATO.

In December 2023, in the midst of the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip, Kaurismäki joined over 50 filmmakers in signing an open letter published in Libération. The letter demanded a ceasefire, an end to the killing of civilians, the establishment of a corridor into Gaza for humanitarian aid, and the release of hostages. In May 2025, Kaurismäki and over 350 other film industry figures signed an open letter criticizing the industry's passivity about the war in Gaza. Four months later, he joined numerous others in signing an open agreement with Film Workers for Palestine, pledging not to work with Israeli film institutions "that are implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people".