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Director Aleksi Mäkelä
(Born 20.11.1969 in Helsinki)

Aleksi Mäkelä is the most successful of the modern era Finnish film directors: the total domestic audience of his movies in theatrical release is 2,5 million.
The Tough Ones (1999) was one of the key factors in the recent rise of the Finnish cinema, with an audience of 330,000. The Tough Ones was the Finnish Entry for Oscar 1999 as "Best Foreign Language Film".
The biggest domestic box office hit ever, Bad Boys, drew a phenomenal audience of 615,000. After that, Vares - Private Eye was also the number one domestic movie of its release year 2004.
Mäkelä's next movie Matti - Hell is for Heroes was the most popular film in Finland in 2006 with an audience of 462,000. Matti is still number two Finnish box office hit since the eighties.
The next number one domestic box office hit in Mäkelä's career was Hellsinki in 2009.
Home Sweet Home is his tenth feature film. His debut The Romanov Stones was released in 1993.
His movies have collected eleven Finnish Film Awards (Jussi Award) and three Most Popular Movie of the Year Awards.
An exceptional tribute happened to Aleksi Mäkelä in 2009 when he was awarded The State Prize for Cinema.
Besides movies, Mäkelä has directed hundreds of hours of TV series, commercials and music videos. He resides in Nummela, 40 km outside Helsinki.

Producer Markus Selin
(Born 16.3.1960 in Nummela)

The most successful producer in the recent re-birth of popular Finnish cinema, Markus Selin has been behind the movies of Aleksi Mäkelä since 1994. The son of a movie theatre owner himself, Selin has literally absorbed movies since his early childhood.
Selin’s career as a movie producer started in the mid-eighties when he and young Renny Harlin made an international adventure thriller entitled Born American. Because of its anti-Soviet views during a time of extreme political sensitivity, the movie had to be put on hold by ocal censorship for over a year.
Since then Selin has reached a domestic audience of 4 million spectators in Finnish movie theaters.
Selin was chosen Finnish producer of the year in 1999. He has won the Finnish ‘most successful movie’ audience poll seven times and his movies have collected 30 Finnish Movie Awards.
Selin works as a producer in Solar Films, the company he founded in 1995. Under his management, the company has become the leading production company in Finland in the fields of drama and entertainment.
(Updated February 2011)