We might be late to the party, but there is still time to get in on the celebration Metrograph is throwing in honor of Aki Kaurismäki. The Finnish auteur, who turned 62 years old on April 4 (the same day as one of our other heroes), is the subject of a mammoth retrospective, the Total Kaurismäki Show, which is on now through April 11, 2019. In 2017, we gushed over the mini-festival Film Forum staged for the filmmaker in honor of the release of The Other Side of Hope (2017). Metrograph’s program is far more impressive. The retro is a little out of the blue, but we won’t look a gift horse in the mouth. As far as we’re concerned, any time is Kaurismäki time.

Once you’ve viewed a couple of Kaurismäki’s films, it’s easy to pick his pictures out of a crowd. Not to say, if you’ve seen one Kaurismäki, you’ve seen them all, but rather, his style is distinctive. His films are restrained and are marked by their verbal austerity, deadpan wit, and purposeful framing. Often depicting working-class underdogs and outcasts, his narratives masterfully balance humor and humanity. It’s no wonder, Kaurismäki and Jim Jarmusch are members of a mutual admiration society. Kaurismäki also counts Robert Bresson and Japanese filmmaker Yasujirō Ozu, who coincidentally is being fêted at the Film Society of Lincoln Center this week with a screening of Dragnet Girl (1933), as major influences.

Metrograph’s retrospective includes 17 features films, all screening in 35mm, plus a program of shorts. Sadly, Kaurismäki’s feature I Hired a Contract Killer (1990), which was originally part of the lineup, is unable to screen in the series. But, gathering 17 out of the filmmaker’s 18 features was undoubtedly no easy feat.

Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatiana

Generally organized chronologically, the remaining days of the retrospective showcase feature films made from 1994 to present. Cinema enthusiasts can still catch the filmmaker’s Finland trilogy, Drifting Clouds (1996), The Man Without a Past (2002), and Lights in the Dusk (2006), as well as Juha (1999), Kaurismäki’s absurdist adaptable of Juhani Aho’s novel; Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatiana (1994), an anti-romantic road comedy; and two films in his “port city” series, the FIPRESCI Prize-winning immigration caper Le Havre (2011), and his latest (but hopefully not his last) The Other Side of Hope (2017), which takes on the European refugee crisis. Also, the shorts program has a screening. It contains films made between 1986 and 2013.

For screening times and more information about the Total Kaurismäki Show, visit the Metrograph website. For a taste of Kaurismäki, check out the videos below, including a brief interview with the filmmaker from 1990.