The Other Side of Hope

A timely contribution from Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki.

This timely contribution from Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki entwines the struggles of a Syrian asylum seeker newly arrived in Helsinki on a coal freighter, and a poker-playing local who walks out on his alcoholic wife. Having escaped the violence of Aleppo and threatened with deportation by Finnish authorities, Khaled finds work at a ramshackle restaurant populated by others bumping along the bottom. The second in a proposed trilogy after Le Havre (Flatpack 2012), The Other Side of Hope has everything we’ve come to expect from Kaurismäki: sumptuous colours, 50s rock n roll, deadpan humour and a wry humanity.