The same year also saw the release of a biographical film, , directed by Mika Kaurismäki and starring Pekka Strang as the artist. The film offered a nuanced and intimate look at Laaksonen's life, exploring his relationships, artistic development, and the societal context in which he worked.
The transition from Touko Laaksonen to "Tom of Finland" is the film’s core narrative engine, and Pekka Strang plays it with a delicate mix of exhaustion and exhilaration. The film posits that Tom was not a separate personality, but a necessary armor. When Touko draws, the camera lingers on the ink hitting the paper. The lines are confident, bold, and black. He draws what he cannot have in the real world.
The biopic showed how Tom’s style was born from trauma. As a young man, he had served as an anti-aircraft officer in WWII, forced to kill Soviet soldiers. The horror of that experience, the film suggested, was sublimated into his art. He spent the rest of his life replacing guns with bulges, replacing the violence of war with the consensual power of sex. tom of finland -2017-
Strang’s performance is subtle yet powerful, conveying the quiet strength of a man who fought for freedom through art.
Beyond the museum and the mailbox, 2017 saw the wide release of Tom of Finland , a feature-length biographical drama directed by Dome Karukoski. Unlike previous documentary treatments, this film sought to humanize the artist behind the myth. It traced his journey from the trauma of WWII to the liberating underground of Los Angeles and his eventual recognition. Crucially, the film did not apologize for his work’s contested elements—namely, accusations of fascist aesthetics and the erasure of body diversity. By showing Laaksonen as a shy, complex man whose art was a direct antidote to shame, the film introduced his imagery to a generation of queer youth who had grown up with Grindr and marriage equality, for whom Tom’s world seemed at once ancient and thrillingly authentic. The same year also saw the release of
The film highlights how Tom’s art reclaimed symbols of state authority and oppression—specifically uniforms and leather—and repurposed them into icons of queer pleasure, pride, and strength.
However, director Karukoski was careful to avoid a mere shock-fest. He spent five years researching the artist's life, explaining, "People were expecting a provocation – after all, it's a Tom of Finland film!... his core fans said, ‘The sex is there in the drawings, what we want is his story.’" The result is a thoughtful, reverent exploration of a man who, as Karukoski says, "never carried any shame". The film is ultimately a universal story of love, courage, and perseverance, mirroring the gay liberation movement for which his leather-clad studs served as a defiant emblem. The film posits that Tom was not a
Returning to peacetime Helsinki, Touko faces a deeply repressive society where homosexuality is criminally prosecuted and classified as a psychiatric illness. Gay men are forced to seek companionship in the perilous shadows of public parks, constantly subjected to violent police crackdowns and blackmail.