The celebrated Finnish artist and illustrator has been brought above the radar of cultural history in a new biopic by the acclaimed film director, Thomas “Dome” Karukoski. Premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2017, the film was written by Aleksi Bardy and has Pekka Strang starring.
It provides an immersive, handsomely crafted look at how Tom of Finland came to create his iconic drawings of hyper-masculine, leather-clad men that ridiculed authority figures. Touko Laaksonen aka Tom of Finland, via Becoming Tom of Finlandīy day a senior art director at an advertising agency McCann Erickson, Touko Valio Laaksonen aka Tom of Finland spent his spare time drawing his sexual fantasies that featured homoerotic archetypes such as lumberjacks, sailors, bikers, blue-collar workers, policemen and men dressed in leather.
