The Finnish filmmaker Ilkka Järvi-Laturi made only three features in his life, but each is maverick in its own right. His 1989 debut, Homebound, is a gritty, realist film about a young man struggling to escape a cycle of violence; City Unplugged (1993) sets a heist in the wake of Estonia’s independence in the 1990s; and History Is Made at Night (1999), the strangest of the bunch, is a star-studded spy-thriller-slash-screwball-comedy set between New York City and Helsinki.

The films together represent a unique creative vision—one that combines genre ambitions with a defiantly indie sensibility and an unexpected sense of humor. For the first time ever, all three features are screening together in New York City, as part of a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art dedicated to Järvi-Laturi, who died last year. On today’s episode, Film Comment editors Clinton Krute and Devika Girish invited Steve Macfarlane, one of the curators of the MoMA retrospective, and Hannu Björkbacka, a Finnish critic, for an overview of Järvi-Laturi’s career and work.