Alexis Kouros
Alexis Kouros is an Iranian-Finnish writer, documentary-maker, director, and producer. Kouros is of Iranian Kurdish heritage.
His first book, Gondwana's Children, won the Finlandia Junior Award in 1997. His first film was the 2000 documentary, Waiting for Godot at De Gaulle, the story of Mehran Karimi Nasseri.
He also directed a documentary called Without My Daughter in response to the 1991 Hollywood movie, Not [Without My Daughter (film)|Not Without My Daughter]. He started his production company Dream Catcher. The company began publishing Finland's first English language monthly called SixDegrees in 2003. Helsinki Times, a weekly English newspaper, was established by Dream Catcher in April 2007.
''Helsinki Times'' and ''SixDegrees''
Kouros went on to become the editor-in-chief for the Helsinki Times. A paper version of Helsinki Times was published in tabloid format and was eventually discontinued in February 2015, but continued in web format.SixDegrees continued to be published daily online, as well as monthly in print, until 2016, when the latter of which was discontinued.
The website has republished articles from the People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the [Chinese Communist Party]. In 2020, the Helsinki Times published an article from the People's Daily which included a COVID-19 misinformation by China#US Army and [Fort Detrick origins|conspiracy theory about the origins of COVID-19]. The Helsinki Times said the "barter-exchange" arrangement with the People's Daily was an attempt to balance western media coverage which it said was "at times extremely one-sided and biased".
SixDegrees published its last article in 2024. In March 2025, Kouros announced that the Helsinki Times had been acquired by an unspecified "international media company."