Hamlet Goes Business
TITLE
Hamlet Goes Business
DIRECTOR
Aki Kaurismäki
COUNTRY
Finland
YEAR
1987
DURATION
86′
GENRE
Comedy, Drama, Romance
Hamlet Goes Business
A bizarre black-and-white film noir reworking of Shakespeare's 'Hamlet'. After the death of his father, young Hamlet inherits a seat on the board of a company controlled by his uncle that decides to move into the rubber duck market. But Hamlet is suspicious of the circumstances surrounding his father's death...
DIRECTOR BIOGRAPHY - Aki Kaurismäki
Aki Kaurismäki did a wide variety of jobs including postman, dish-washer and film critic, before forming a production and distribution company, Villealfa (in homage to Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville (1965)) with his older brother Mika Kaurismäki, also a film-maker. Both Aki and Mika are prolific film-makers, and together have been responsible for one-fifth of the total output of the Finnish film industry since the early 1980s, though Aki's work has found more favour abroad. His films are very short (he says a film should never run longer than 90 minutes, and many of his films are nearer 70), eccentric parodies of various genres (road movies, film noir, rock musicals), populated by lugubrious hard-drinking Finns and set to eclectic soundtracks, typically based around '50s rock'n'roll. In the 1990s he has made films in Britain (I Hired a Contract Killer (1990)) and France (The Bohemian Life (1992)).
- Director Aki Kaurismäki
- Screenplay Aki Kaurismäki
- Cinematography Timo Salminen
- Editing Raija Talvio
- Cast Pirkka-Pekka Petelius, Esko Salminen, Kati Outinen, Elina Salo
- Producer/s Aki Kaurismäki
- Production Company Villealfa Filmproductions
- Distributor/s Finnkino, Alive Vertrieb und Marketing
- Project Title Hamlet Goes Business
- Project Type Comedy, Drama, Romance
- Completion Date August 21, 1987
- Country of origin Finland
- Country of filming Finland
- Language Finnish
- First-time Filmmaker No
- Student Project No
Aki Kaurismäki
Aki Kaurismäki did a wide variety of jobs including postman, dish-washer and film critic, before forming a production and distribution company, Villealfa (in homage to Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville (1965)) with his older brother Mika Kaurismäki, also a film-maker. Both Aki and Mika are prolific film-makers, and together have been responsible for one-fifth of the total output of the Finnish film industry since the early 1980s, though Aki's work has found more favour abroad. His films are very short (he says a film should never run longer than 90 minutes, and many of his films are nearer 70), eccentric parodies of various genres (road movies, film noir, rock musicals), populated by lugubrious hard-drinking Finns and set to eclectic soundtracks, typically based around '50s rock'n'roll. In the 1990s he has made films in Britain (I Hired a Contract Killer (1990)) and France (The Bohemian Life (1992)).
Jussi Awards
Best Art Direction, 1988
Tirana International Film Festival
Special Screening, 2022
