Touko Valio Laaksonen, best known by his pseudonym Tom of Finland, was a Finnish artist known for his stylized highly masculinized homoerotic art, and for his influence on 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 primary and secondary sex traits, wearing tight or partially removed clothing.
Thomas "Dome" Karukoski is a Finnish film director. He is considered to be one of Finland's most successful film directors, having 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.
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.
Wild Bunch AG is a pan-European film distribution and international sales company, originally created in 1979 as Senator Film Verleih GmbH, which later became Senator Entertainment AG. The name Wild Bunch comes from the French company Wild Bunch S.A., created in 2002, which became a subsidiary of Senator Entertainment in February 2015. Senator Entertainment AG renamed itself Wild Bunch AG in July 2015. Wild Bunch has distributed and sold films such as Land of the Dead (2005), Southland Tales (2006), Cassandra's Dream (2007), Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), Che (2008), Whatever Works (2009), The King's Speech (2010), The Artist (2011), Titane and Where Is Anne Frank (2021).
EuropaCorp S.A. is a French motion picture company headquartered in Saint-Denis, a northern suburb of Paris, and one of a few full service independent studios that both produces and distributes feature films. It specializes in production, distribution, home entertainment, VOD, sales, partnerships and licenses, recording, publishing and exhibition. EuropaCorp's integrated financial model generates revenues from a wide range of sources, with films from many genres and a strong presence in the international markets.
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.
Ruben Östlund is a Swedish filmmaker. His films Force Majeure (2014), The Square (2017) and Triangle of Sadness (2022) were all critically acclaimed and won awards at the Cannes Film Festival, including the Palme d'Or for the latter two.
Of Gods and Men is a 2010 French drama film directed by Xavier Beauvois, starring Lambert Wilson and Michael Lonsdale. Its original French language title is Des hommes et des dieux, which means "Of Men and of Gods" and refers to a verse from the Bible shown at the beginning of the film. It centers on the monastery of Tibhirine, where nine Cistercian monks lived in harmony with the largely Muslim population of Algeria, until seven of them were kidnapped and assassinated in 1996 during the Algerian Civil War.
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.
My Life as a Courgette is a 2016 stop-motion animated comedy-drama film directed by Claude Barras. It was screened in the Directors' Fortnight section at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival.
Racer and the Jailbird is a 2017 drama film directed by Michaël R. Roskam, starring Matthias Schoenaerts and Adèle Exarchopoulos. A gangster and a racing car driver fall in love, set against the background of a brutal crime gang in Brussels. It was selected to be screened out of competition at the 74th Venice International Film Festival in 2017. It was selected as the Belgian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 90th Academy Awards, but it was not nominated. It received five nominations at the 8th Magritte Awards, including Best Flemish Film.
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.
You Disappear is a 2017 Danish drama film directed by Peter Schønau Fog. The film was based on Christian Jungersen's novel by the same name. It was screened in the Special Presentations section at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival. It was selected as the Danish entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 90th Academy Awards, but it was not nominated.
Rialto is a 2019 Irish/British drama film directed by Peter Mackie Burns and written by Mark O'Halloran. The film stars Tom Vaughan-Lawlor.
