Aki Kaurismäki is a filmmaker from Finland, who has made films since 1981, winning awards at the Cannes Film Festival and the Berlin Film Festival and earning Academy Award nominations, among others. His films range from dark comedy to farce, from rock and roll to tango, from mocumentaries to passionate advocacy for the least among us. Who is this strange northern artist, whose films have won him a following with art-house and film-festival audiences around the world? The talk provides ways of understanding Aki Kaurismäki’s films and of connecting their Finnish roots to their flight around the world as a favorite of world cinema viewers.