53rd THESSALONIKI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

November 2 - 11, 2012

PRESS RELEASE   TRIBUTES
Three diverse and unique directors are being celebrated this year in the 53rd edition of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival: Aki Kaurismaki (Finland), Bahman Ghobadi (Iran) and Andreas Dresen (Germany).
All three directors will attend the event to present and discuss their work. In addition, the TIFF will publish a book on Aki Kaurismaki’s work, with new textual analyses and film critiques.

AKI KAURISMAKI

Aki Kaurismaki, born in 1957 in Orimattila, is not only the most well-known Finnish filmmaker along with his brother Mika, but one of the most distinct auteurs of the past three decades. He started making films by collaborating with Mika and ventured on his own for the first time with Crime and Punishment in1983, updating Dostoyevsky’s novel and immediately establishing his unique type of filmmaking. Among the numerous awards he has garnered over the years are: the Interfilm Award at the 1990 Berlin IFF for The Match Factory Girl, the FIPRESCI Award at the 1992 Berlin IFF for La vie de boheme, the Grand Prize of the Jury and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at the 2002 Cannes IFF for The Man Without a Past and the FIPRESCI Award and the Ecumenical Jury Special Mention at the 2011 Cannes IFF for Le Havre.
11 of Kaurismaki’s films will be screened during the 53rd TIFF.

Kaurismaki’s universe is decidedly Finnish, yet his films have an unquestionable universal appeal. They are bleak and funny, minimalist and melodramatic, subtly ironic, muted, yet dreamlike (owing much to Timo Salminen’s extraordinary cinematography) and full of rock ‘n’ roll, as well as a broader love for vintage Americana. His heroes, blue-collar underdogs (as well as various delightful dogs), losers, unemployed and homeless, are amongst the most dignified and solemnly droll characters in international cinema. They are men and women of a few words and sparse smiles, who don’t belong in the system, but often find love, joy and purpose outside of it, and Kaurismaki rewards them for that. Although his characters go through difficulties of varying degrees, they get the happy, hopeful endings that they deserve; in fact, audiences always root for them, which is one of the Finnish director’s greatest talents. Societal and economic conditions, as well as the realities of class, are always present in Kaurismaki’s films, most notably in the Working Class Trilogy (Shadows in Paradise, Ariel, The Match Factory Girl) and the Loser Trilogy (Drifting Clouds, The Man Without A Past, Lights in the Dusk), which reflects the Finnish economic crisis that hit the country in the 1990s. Kaurismaki, socially committed but never didactic, narrated these tales of woe by creating wonderfully unassuming comedies. His oeuvre definitely has something to do with what the Finns call sisu, an accurately untranslatable word that refers to a specifically Finnish trait: a resilience, obstinacy and determination to deal with difficult situations, as well as a degree of brave madness required to do so.