Aki Kaurismäki: Films from the Other Side of Hope

July 6–August 5, 2018

Pay a visit to Kaurismäki’s unique cinematic universe, where melodrama meets minimalism and bitter reality is tempered with deadpan comedy.

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  • The Other Side of Hope

  • The Match Factory Girl

  • Le Havre

  • Drifting Clouds

  • The Man Without a Past

  • Upcoming
    Films
  • Upcoming
    Events
  • Selected
    Objects
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Past Films

  • Le Havre

    • Sunday, August 5 7 PM
    Aki Kaurismäki
    Finland, France, Germany, 2011

    Kaurismäki depicts the intersecting (mis)fortunes of a refugee from Gabon and a shoeshine man in the French port of the title. “A love letter to France, in particular to a half-imaginary, half-vanished realm of proletarian Frenchness” (New York Times).

  • The Other Side of Hope

    • Friday, July 6 7 PM
    • Sunday, July 22 7 PM
    Aki Kaurismäki
    Finland, Germany, 2017

    BAMPFA Student Committee Pick!

    A Syrian refugee adrift in Helsinki finds an unlikely ally in a sullen restaurateur in Kaurismäki’s delightfully humanizing take on immigration. “At once honest and artful, a touching and clear-sighted declaration of faith in people and in movies” (New York Times).

  • Drifting Clouds

    • Saturday, July 21 8:30 PM
    Aki Kaurismäki
    Finland, 1996

    Imported 35mm Print

    An unemployed couple strive to make a new life for themselves in Kaurismäki’s tale of economic dislocation painted in shades of blue. The moral of this touching, deadpan fable: “Life is short and miserable. Be merry while you can.”

  • The Man Without a Past

    • Sunday, July 15 7 PM
    Aki Kaurismäki
    Finland, France, Germany, 2002

    An amnesiac finds comfort with a dour Salvation Army soup-slinger in Kaurismäki’s “comedy of losers,” a look into the heart of poverty and the warmth of humanity. “At once artful, accessible . . . hilarious and humane” (New York Times).

  • La vie de Bohème

    • Friday, July 13 8:30 PM
    Aki Kaurismäki
    Finland, France, 1992

    Forget Puccini: Kaurismäki delivers his own ironic yet improbably sincere take on Henri Murger’s novel of bohemians struggling to sustain themselves, their loves, and their art in a timelessly shabby Paris.

  • The Match Factory Girl

    • Sunday, July 8 5:15 PM
    Aki Kaurismäki
    Finland, Sweden, 1990

    This grimly funny gender parable stars Kaurismäki regular Kati Outinen in “a beautiful, unsentimental performance . . . deeply realized and affecting” (New York Times). With short Those Were the Days.