Mika Kaurismäki

Who is Mika Kaurismäki?

Mika Juhani Kaurismäki is a Finnish film director.

He is the elder brother of Aki Kaurismäki, and the father of Maria Kaurismäki, who graduated from Tampere School of Art and Media in 2008 with her movie Sideline.

Mika Kaurismäki has lived in Brazil since approximately 1992 and has made several Brazilian-themed films, including Amazon, Tigrero, Sambólico, Rytmi, and Moro no Brasil. His film Brasileirinho is a 2005 musical documentary about traditional Brazilian choro music.

Mika Kaurismäki’s first film, The Liar, was an overnight sensation, when first shown in Finland; it marked the beginning of the Kaurismäki brothers' film career and started a new era in Finnish cinema.

After high school Mika Kaurismäki worked as a painter of houses and apartments in the small town of Kuusankoski in the southeastern part of Finland. In the autumn of 1976, when the winter was coming and the annual high season for painting houses was over, he thought of doing something else in life. Still wearing his painter overalls, he walked into a bookstore and bought the newly published “History of Cinema” by Peter von Bagh. He started reading it from page one and decided to become a film director.