Matti Ijäs

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Matti Ijäs is a Finnish television and film director and screenwriter. His works for television and cinema are characterised by eccentric characters, awkward situations, warm deadpan humour and witty dialogue. His recurrent themes include birth and death and other beginnings and ends. Often writing, co-writing, or adapting his own screenplays, he is considered one of the few true auteurs in Finnish cinema alongside Aki Kaurismäki.

Matti Ijäs grew up in Töölö, Helsinki. His mother worked as an architect, and his father was a construction manager for the Finnish Defence Forces. Ijäs studied journalism at the Tampere University but never graduated after getting a job at Yleisradio, the Finnish Broadcasting Company, making children's television programmes at their regional studio in Turku. Embracing Marxist ideas like many Finnish artists and media people in the 1970s, Ijäs made children's documentaries about such themes as Chilean refugees to Finland and the international peace movement. His first major work was Läskilinssi, a 1976 miniseries about a boy facing bullying because of his appearance. Many of his short films for children were awarded at the Tampere Film Festival.