The younger member of Finland's most prolific and irreverent filmmaking team, Aki Kaurismäki, together with older brother Mika, virtually invented the "new Finnish cinema." In complete control of their own company, Villealfa (named in honor of Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville), the Kaurismäki brothers produced fascinating, steadfastly eccentric films with astonishing frequency, beginning with The Liar in 1980. Their work — which comprised one-fifth of the Finnish film industry's total output since the early '80s — was distinguished by generous doses of raunchy humor, dead-on satire, a deliberate destruction of cinematic conventions, the carefully calculated smashing of censorial dictates, and, above all, an overwhelming sense of the absurd.

To keep costs low, Aki and Mika alternated the writing and directing chores. Aki's directorial efforts included Rikos Ja Rangaistus (1983), a free-wheeling classical adaptation of Crime and Punishment, and Hamlet Goes Business (1988). One of the best-known and best-distributed of the Aki-directed Villealfa films was Ariel…  » Read more