Mittsommernachtstango

Is tango perhaps not Latin American, but Finnish? No less a person than Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki makes this bold statement. After which, German director Viviane Blumenschein switches straight to a bar in Buenos Aires where a handful of tango musicians respond with fits of laughter. Because if tango is Finnish, then Kaurismäki probably thinks Maradona is too? And is sauna an Argentine invention then? The Argentinians’ laughter was probably heard in Finland. In the documentary Midsummer Night’s Tango, three Argentine musicians fly to Helsinki to see what’s going on with ‘their’ tango in a totally different country. Their continual surprise is unavoidable. This results in a hilarious and sometimes moving series of meetings between musicians from two cultures that are totally different and yet sometimes surprisingly similar.

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