What do you do if you’re the President of Finland and you meet a famous Hollywood celebrity on a flight to New York?
You take a picture and post it on Instagram, of course!
That’s what happened on Sunday evening as Sauli Niinistö was flying to the Big Apple for a week of meetings and speeches at the United Nations.
On the same plane was film director Spike Lee, who had been visiting Helsinki for a day with his friend, Finnish actor Jasper Pääkkönen.
Pääkkönen stars in Lee’s latest film BlacKKKlansman. The pair had been at a film festival in Italy, and arranged to visit Helsinki afterwards.
BlacKKKlansman is based on a true story about the first black police officer in a Colorado town, who infiltrates the local chapter of the racist Ku Klux Klan organisation.
During his brief stopover in the Finnish capital, Spike Lee dropped in to the Love and Anarchy Film Festival where he had previously been announced as this year’s guest of honour. Lee also met local media personalities, fans and politicians at the US Embassy.
Writing on his official Instagram account, the President (or more likely one of his staff) wrote “talking of course about Jasper Pääkkönen”.
