“Fallen Leaves” by Aki Kaurismäki, Finland-Germany, 2023, 81’

World premiere: Cannes IFF - 2023, Jury prize

Also, Grand-Prih FIPRESCI - 2023

Synopsis:

FALLEN LEAVES tells the story of two lonely people who meet each other by chance in the Helsinki night and try to find the first, only, and ultimate love of their lives. Their path towards this honourable goal is clouded by the man's alcoholism, lost phone numbers, not knowing each other's names or addresses, and life's general tendency to place obstacles in the way of those seeking their happiness.

This gentle tragicomedy, previously thought to be lost, is the fourth part of Aki Kaurismäki's working-class trilogy (Shadows in Paradise, Ariel, and The Match Factory Girl).

Aki Kaurismäki

Biography: 

Aki Kaurismäki, born in 1957, grew up into "the age terrorised by the television", and has tried and managed to stick totally to the inseparable realities of the real world and the "deep screen" that only the 35 mm film - light against the electronic machinations, the beauty of artisan tradition against technological overkill - makes possible. He never used any other material, least of all video, and he is simply very proud for having joined in the continuity and tradition of "real cinema". His minimalist style is all his own (and that of the great cinematographer of all his films, Timo Salminen); he never entered the Finnish Film School (as he was suspected to be "too cynical"). At the same time his films are full of quotations (he mentioned Juha would have more than hundred) but always invisible, a part of a constant dialogue where particles of film culture reveal realities of human environment, society and psyche as it is now, and as it was during the tender years of Aki's childhood; only vaguely known to foreign spectators, there is always an overwhelming presence of Finnish typicalities, "objects of love" and references to well-known sources of Finnish literary evergreens, painting or of course popular music (or our beloved films).