FALLEN LEAVES (2023)

Moviegoing dreamers, there is hope for us still in this timeless, tender romance from living legend Aki Kaurismäki. Imbued with the filmmaker’s idiosyncratic playfulness and deadpan humor, this bittersweet comedy charmed even the most dour of critics and, delightfully, won the Jury Prize at Cannes.

The film tells the story of Ansa, a supermarket shelf-stocker on a zero-hour contract, later a recyclable plastic sorter, and Holappa, a sandblaster, an alcoholic, later an ex-alcoholic, whose paths have accidentally crossed and who, despite adversity and misunderstandings, try to build some kind of relationship on the harsher side of the welfare state.