Tom of Finland | |
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Directed by | Dome Karukoski |
Written by | Aleksi Bardy |
Produced by |
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Starring |
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Cinematography | Lasse Frank |
Edited by | Harri Ylönen |
Music by |
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Production companies |
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Distributed by |
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Release dates |
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Running time | 115 minutes |
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Budget | €3.8 million [3] |
Box office | $1.8 million [4] [5] |
Tom of Finland is a 2017 biographical drama film directed by Dome Karukoski and written by Aleksi Bardy. It stars Pekka Strang as Touko Laaksonen, better known as Tom of Finland, a Finnish homoerotic artist. [6]
Tom of Finland premiered on 27 January 2017 at Gothenburg Film Festival and was released theatrically in Finland on 24 February 2017. [3] It was selected as the Finnish entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 90th Academy Awards, but it was not nominated. [7] [8]
Touko Laaksonen returns home after serving in World War II. In post-war Helsinki, he makes a name for himself with his homoerotic drawings of muscular men. Before finding fame, he finds challenges from his sister and Finnish society due to his art.
At the 2016 Finnish Film Affair (a "work-in-progress forum" running alongside the Helsinki International Film Festival), Tom of Finland shared the Best Pitch prize, splitting the award money with Post Punk Disorder . [9] [10]
At the 2017 Göteborg Film Festival, the film won the Fipresci Award. [11] [12]
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 83% based on 70 reviews, with an average rating of 6.9/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Tom of Finland honors its subject with an empathetic, even-handed, and above all entertaining look at the pioneering art he produced from private turmoil." [13] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 56 out of 100 based on 13 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". [14]
The Green League, shortened to the Greens, is a green political party in Finland. Ideologically, the Green League is positioned on the centre-left of the political spectrum. It is a reformist party and it is supportive of feminism, animal rights and green liberal ideas.
Touko Valio Laaksonen, known by the pseudonym Tom of Finland, was a Finnish artist who made stylized highly masculinized homoerotic art, and influenced late 20th-century gay culture. He has been called the "most influential creator of gay pornographic images" by cultural historian Joseph W. Slade. Over the course of four decades, he produced some 3,500 illustrations, mostly featuring men with exaggerated sex traits, wearing tight or partially removed clothing.
Magnolia Pictures LLC is an American independent film distributor and production company, and is a subsidiary of Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner's 2929 Entertainment. Magnolia was formed in 2001 by Bill Banowsky and Eamonn Bowles, and specializes in both foreign and independent films. Magnolia distributes some of its films, especially foreign and genre titles, under the Magnet Releasing arm. In April 2011, Cuban had placed Magnolia up for sale, but stated that he would not sell the company unless the offer was "very, very compelling." One of the recent releases Magnolia distributed is Shoplifters, a Japanese drama that won the Palme d'Or at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 91st Academy Awards. Magnify, formerly Magnolia Pictures International, is the global sales arm of Magnolia Pictures.
Göteborg Film Festival (GFF), formerly Göteborg International Film Festival (GIFF), known in English as the Gothenburg Film Festival, formerly Gothenburg International Film Festival, is an annual film festival in Gothenburg, Sweden and the largest film event in Scandinavia. When it was launched on February 8, 1979, it showed 17 films on 3 screens and had 3,000 visitors.
Thomas August George Dome Karukoski is a Finnish film director. He has won over 30 festival awards and having directed six feature films that became blockbusters in his home country and also received international recognition.
Pekka Kristian Strang is a Finland-Swedish actor and the artistic director of Lilla Teatern in Helsinki, 2005–2014. He grew up in Vaasa on the Finnish west coast. In 1997 he was admitted to the Theatre Academy of Finland and graduated in 2001. The same year he starred in the movie Drakarna över Helsingfors and in 2004 he had a role in Producing Adults. Strang plays the titular character in the 2017 Dome Karukoski film Tom of Finland. Across three seasons he portrayed Stockholm's police chief Toivonen in Bäckström. Strang also played the main protagonist "Anlaf" in the Netflix movie "The Last Kingdom Seven Kings Must Die" 2023.
Aku Louhimies is a Finnish film director and screenwriter. He has directed feature films, documentary films, commercials and music videos. His international breakthrough was the 2016 serial drama Rebellion. He directed and produced the 2017 war film The Unknown Soldier which is the biggest box office hit since 1955 in Finland.
Pekka Olavi Haavisto is a Finnish politician of the Green League who served as the Minister for Foreign Affairs from 2019 to 2023.
Daddy and the Muscle Academy is a 1991 Finnish documentary film directed and written by Ilppo Pohjola. The documentary is focused on the life and works of Tom of Finland, the pseudonym of Finnish gay erotic artist Touko Laaksonen.
Pirjo Irene Honkasalo is a Finnish film director who has also worked as a cinematographer, film editor, producer, screenwriter and actress. In 1980 she co-directed Flame Top with Pekka Lehto, with whom she worked earlier and later as well. The film was chosen for the 1981 Cannes Film Festival. In the 1990s she focused on feature documentaries such as "The Trilogy of the Sacred and the Satanic". Honkasalo returned to fiction with Fire-Eater (1998) and Concrete Night (2013), both of which were written by Pirkko Saisio. Concrete Night won six Jussi Awards in 2014, among them the Jussi for the Best Direction and the Jussi for the Best Film. Its world premiere was at the Toronto International Film Festival in Masters series.
The Tom of Finland stamps are a 2014 issue of three Finnish first-class stamps drawn by and celebrating the work of Finnish artist Tom of Finland.
Finnish art started to form its individual characteristics in the 19th century, when romantic nationalism began to rise in the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland.
The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki is a 2016 biographical drama film directed by Juho Kuosmanen and written by Mikko Myllylahti and Kuosmanen. An international co-production between Finland, Sweden, and Germany, the film stars Jarkko Lahti, Oona Airola, and Eero Milonoff. It tells the true story of Olli Mäki, the famous Finnish boxer who had a shot at the 1962 World Featherweight title.
Durk Dehner is a businessman, film director, and publisher who co-founded the culturally influential Tom of Finland Company, and later established the Tom of Finland Foundation dedicated to preserving, collecting, and exhibiting homoerotic art, a registered historic landmark in Los Angeles, California, US.
Ilppo Anssi Pohjola is an independent filmmaker, producer and artist based in Helsinki, Finland. His international breakthrough was Daddy and the Muscle Academy (1991), a documentary about Tom of Finland. Pohjola has produced the cinematic installations and films by Eija-Liisa Ahtila since 1993.
The Missile is a 2024 Finnish-Estonian comedy-drama film written and directed by Miia Tervo. Based on the true story of a Russian missile that crashed at Lake Inari in 1984, the film stars Oona Airola as Niina, an archivist for the local newspaper who has just recently left her abusive husband, and finds new confidence and strength in both her career and her personal life as she becomes increasingly drawn into the newspaper's investigation of the incident.
Miia Tervo is a Finnish film director and screenwriter, whose debut feature film Aurora was released in 2019.