Ere Kokkonen

Certainly not critically acclaimed, but certainly one of the most successful, Finnish film maker Erkki "Ere" Kokkonen has created a long career in film business. Kokkonen is best known as a director, but he has also wrote almost 30 movies. Kokkonen's directing career is impressive; he started in the 1960s on television and only few years later he directed the most successful Finnish films. Those films were produced by Spede Pasanen, who created character Uuno Turhapuro and which Kokkonen directed 15 movies based on. Almost all of those movies were highly successful but never got any good words from critics. At the end of the 1980s Kokkonen left the Turhapuro series and started his own series with the character Vääpeli Körmy. Unfortunately the films got even worst reviews and success in theaters wasn't even close to that achieved by the Turhapuro movies. In 1991 he returned to direct Turhapuro movies. Finnish Film Archives has published a list with 20 movies which has got the biggest audiences in Finland. In that list Kokkonen has five movies, the best one is no 7.