Aki Kaurismäki is back with this new film Fallen Leaves that won the Jury Prize at Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. The legendary Finnish director has made a film that is bound to be the darling of the upcoming awards season and which could possibly see it win the Best Foreign Feature film at the Oscars in 2024. Fallen Leaves is a simple film that takes us through the lives of two lonely souls as they navigate their bleak lives. This is a very low-key, subtle kind of film, funny but also absurd at times. A refreshing comedy of errors love story that hits all the right notes powered by the creative storytelling ingenuity of the critically acclaimed director.
The movie kicks off with a series of shots following Ansa (Alma Pöysti) who works at a grocery store. She is closely watched by a security guard, a little too closely like he is stalking her.
The movie kicks off with a series of shots following Ansa (Alma Pöysti) who works at a grocery store. She is closely watched by a security guard, a little too closely like he is stalking her.
- 12/15/2023
- by Prem
- Talking Films
“A cinematographer is a visual psychiatrist–moving an audience through a movie […] making them think the way you want them to think, painting pictures in the dark,” said the late, great Gordon Willis. As our year-end coverage continues, we must pay dues. From talented newcomers to seasoned professionals, we’ve rounded up the examples that have most impressed us this year.
All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (Jomo Fray)
Raven Jackson’s directorial debut All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt slows down the cycle of life. The camera rests on hands, on backs, on people connected through touch, sound, and smell. There isn’t any rush, any intention to leave these moments. Jackson and cinematographer Jomo Fray find beauty, grace, and life in two people holding hands, dancing, skinning a fish, and the trees passing while a family drives down the road. The film doesn’t just feel like a...
All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (Jomo Fray)
Raven Jackson’s directorial debut All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt slows down the cycle of life. The camera rests on hands, on backs, on people connected through touch, sound, and smell. There isn’t any rush, any intention to leave these moments. Jackson and cinematographer Jomo Fray find beauty, grace, and life in two people holding hands, dancing, skinning a fish, and the trees passing while a family drives down the road. The film doesn’t just feel like a...
- 12/6/2023
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
Late into Lisandro Alonso’s Jauja, Viggo Mortensen’s Captain Gunnar Dinesen disappeared into a cave. What happened next, in that unnamed stretch of 19th-century Patagonia, was nothing short of otherworldly. Gunnar’s encounter down the grotto was Jauja’s climax, and it stood as a kind of revelation for film and filmmaker both. The narrative trap door stripped Jauja of its western trappings and lifted the Danish soldier’s search for his daughter across the pampa into the realm of myth before an ellipsis shuttled one across time and space and it all became something else entirely. It also moved Alonso away from the observational, minimalist style of his earlier features toward a more expansive, enigmatic, magical register. More than anything, perhaps, that baffling rupture suggested liberation: it was the sort of moment his previous work––with their intimations of spiritual mysteries and numinous references––had long courted; here it finally detonated,...
- 6/14/2023
- by Leonardo Goi
- The Film Stage
By the brazenly esoteric standards of Argentine director Lisandro Alonso, his last feature “Jauja” was virtually a concession to the mainstream. A lushly shot 19th-century historical drama led by Viggo Mortensen, it was — until a typically disorienting coda — close to linear in its colonialist-quest narrative, even as it moved in slow, ever-widening circles, and duly became Alonso’s most widely released film to date. Nine years later (the longest gap yet in a career taken at his own pace), Alonso’s follow-up “Eureka” playfully appears to mock whatever tentative gestures “Jauja” made toward accessibility: A glisteningly opaque meditation on Indigenous living that refracts viewers’ interpretations as it repeatedly switches gear, focus, locus and story, it’s a film built to frustrate those who don’t succumb to its oneiric spell, not that it especially imparts its secrets to those who do.
Eagerly awaited by Alonso’s patient faithful, “Eureka” was...
Eagerly awaited by Alonso’s patient faithful, “Eureka” was...
- 6/3/2023
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
Fallen Leaves (Aki Kaurismäki). What do we mean by “late films”? For Theodor Adorno, the maturity of late works of art did not resemble the kind one finds in fruit: “they are, for the most part, not round, but furrowed, even ravaged.” Granted, Adorno was writing about Beethoven, but this idea of contrarian lateness still survives in debates around the term’s use in cinema. Intransigent and confrontational, late films are both a summation of a filmmaker’s oeuvre and a stripping down of their style. They’re masterful distillations of decades of craft, sheared, in a senescent bid for simplicity, until whatever’s left is honed and impenetrable to the point of alienation.I was thinking of this on my last days in Cannes, as the festival kept yielding new works by august masters: Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s About Dry Grasses, Marco Bellocchio’s Kidnapped, Catherine Breillat’s Last Summer,...
- 5/31/2023
- MUBI
To judge by Aki Kaurismäki’s typically wry and winsome “Fallen Leaves,” the Finnish auteur’s first movie since threatening to retire after “The Other Side of Hope” came out 2017, only two things have any significant importance have happened in the world over the last six years.
The first and most pressing of those is the war in Ukraine, which bleeds into Ansa’s (Alma Pöysti) already depressing kitchen every time the supermarket cashier dares to turn on her radio after work. Listening to news of the latest atrocity in Kyiv is the only thing worse than eating her microwaved dinner in the complete silence Ansa settles for when she can’t find anything more comforting on the airwaves. She doesn’t need any further evidence of the darkness outside her window, thank you very much.
The other major historical milestone since 2017 was obviously the release of Jim Jarmusch’s “The Dead Don’t Die,...
The first and most pressing of those is the war in Ukraine, which bleeds into Ansa’s (Alma Pöysti) already depressing kitchen every time the supermarket cashier dares to turn on her radio after work. Listening to news of the latest atrocity in Kyiv is the only thing worse than eating her microwaved dinner in the complete silence Ansa settles for when she can’t find anything more comforting on the airwaves. She doesn’t need any further evidence of the darkness outside her window, thank you very much.
The other major historical milestone since 2017 was obviously the release of Jim Jarmusch’s “The Dead Don’t Die,...
- 5/24/2023
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
Early in Aki Kaurismäki’s slender but enormously satisfying Fallen Leaves (Kuolleet Lehdet), the male protagonist is invited by his buddy to go to Friday night karaoke. “Tough guys don’t sing,” he replies, in the signature affectless deadpan shared by all the Finnish master’s characters. But that tough guy turns out to be yearning for love, refusing to give up when a lost phone number and a series of other obstacles keep him from a woman he barely knows. In a sense the tough guy is also Kaurismäki himself, inhabiting a world defined by dourness and melancholy but always seeking pathways to comfort, hope and light.
The director had spoken of retirement after his beautiful Syrian refugee tale The Other Side of Hope in 2017, and this return after six years is waggishly described as a work previously believed to be lost. It’s an expansion of Kaurismäki’s Proletariat Trilogy,...
The director had spoken of retirement after his beautiful Syrian refugee tale The Other Side of Hope in 2017, and this return after six years is waggishly described as a work previously believed to be lost. It’s an expansion of Kaurismäki’s Proletariat Trilogy,...
- 5/22/2023
- by David Rooney
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Luis Ortega has wrapped production in Argentina on “Kill the Jockey,” starring Úrsula Corberó, “Money Heist’s” Tokyo, and Nahuel Pérez Biscayart (“120 Bpm”), which is shaping up as one of the biggest upcoming movies from Latin America.
Ortega’s follow-up to 2018 Un Certain Regard hit “El Angel,” which sold worldwide and set a box office record in Argentina, “Kill the Jockey” has been snapped up for overseas sales by Vicente Canales’ Film Factory Entertainment, which also sold “El Angel.”
TelevisaUnivision VOD service ViX will roll out “Kill the Jockey” in the U.S. and Latin America. Scanbox handles distribution in Scandinavia.
“Kill the Jockey’s” top-notch cast also features Daniel Giménez Cacho, Mariana Di Girólamo, Daniel Fanego (“El Ángel”) and Roly Serrano (“Youth”).
It turns on Remo (Pérez Biscayart), the best jockey of his generation, whose addictions, however, have gradually cast a shadow over his glory. Like Abril (Corberó), another jockey,...
Ortega’s follow-up to 2018 Un Certain Regard hit “El Angel,” which sold worldwide and set a box office record in Argentina, “Kill the Jockey” has been snapped up for overseas sales by Vicente Canales’ Film Factory Entertainment, which also sold “El Angel.”
TelevisaUnivision VOD service ViX will roll out “Kill the Jockey” in the U.S. and Latin America. Scanbox handles distribution in Scandinavia.
“Kill the Jockey’s” top-notch cast also features Daniel Giménez Cacho, Mariana Di Girólamo, Daniel Fanego (“El Ángel”) and Roly Serrano (“Youth”).
It turns on Remo (Pérez Biscayart), the best jockey of his generation, whose addictions, however, have gradually cast a shadow over his glory. Like Abril (Corberó), another jockey,...
- 5/17/2023
- by John Hopewell
- Variety Film + TV
San Sebastian New Directors Buzz Title ‘Woman at Sea,’ Broken Down by Director-Star Dinara Drukarova
Playing in the prestigious New Directors’ section at San Sebastián, “Woman at Sea” (“Grand Marin”), a beautifully shot adaptation of the best-selling book of the same name, marks the feature directing debut of Russian actor Dinara Drukarova, who also stars in the film.
Sold by Loco Films, “Woman at Sea” is produced by Marianne Slot and Carine LeBlanc at Paris-based Slot Machine (“Melancholia”). Lensed in Iceland, the film captures the struggle for integration, and the search for self, all set in the film’s stunning but cold seascapes.
Drukarova’s character Lili follows in the footsteps of the book’s author, Catherine Poulain, who spent 10 years working on fishing boats in Alaska, as documented in the book.
“Woman at Sea” is about a woman working on a boat. I understand you live on a boat. Is there a connection?
I’ve lived on a boat for more than 20 years. My...
Sold by Loco Films, “Woman at Sea” is produced by Marianne Slot and Carine LeBlanc at Paris-based Slot Machine (“Melancholia”). Lensed in Iceland, the film captures the struggle for integration, and the search for self, all set in the film’s stunning but cold seascapes.
Drukarova’s character Lili follows in the footsteps of the book’s author, Catherine Poulain, who spent 10 years working on fishing boats in Alaska, as documented in the book.
“Woman at Sea” is about a woman working on a boat. I understand you live on a boat. Is there a connection?
I’ve lived on a boat for more than 20 years. My...
- 9/17/2022
- by Liza Foreman
- Variety Film + TV
The film’s working title is ‘Fallen Leaves’.
Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki is planning to shoot his 20th feature film, Fallen Leaves (working title) starting in late August, in and around Helsinki.
The Match Factory will handle sales, continuing a long-time relationship with Kaurismaki most recently on 2017’s The Other Side of Hope. Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen will star.
The tragicomedy will be the fourth film continuing the themes of his working class trilogy also including Shadows in Paradise, Ariel and The Match Factory Girl.
The film follows a shop assistant (Pöysti) and a sandblaster (Vatanen). Kaurismäki’s long...
Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki is planning to shoot his 20th feature film, Fallen Leaves (working title) starting in late August, in and around Helsinki.
The Match Factory will handle sales, continuing a long-time relationship with Kaurismaki most recently on 2017’s The Other Side of Hope. Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen will star.
The tragicomedy will be the fourth film continuing the themes of his working class trilogy also including Shadows in Paradise, Ariel and The Match Factory Girl.
The film follows a shop assistant (Pöysti) and a sandblaster (Vatanen). Kaurismäki’s long...
- 6/22/2022
- by Wendy Mitchell
- ScreenDaily
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.Newsmmxx.Cristi Puiu's latest project, titled Mmxx, is currently in post-production. The film is one of the selections of FIDLab, FIDMarseille's program for works-in-progress, due to take place next month. The film will run 2 hours and 40 minutes, according to FIDMarseille's project page, and will follow “the wanderings of a bunch of errant souls stuck at the crossroads of history.”Aki Kaurismäki has formally announced what will be his 19th feature. Dead Leaves, which will be shot by Kaurismäki's regular cinematographer Timo Salminen and feature popular Finnish actors Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen, will premiere sometime in 2023. Little has been revealed about the film, but when asked about it, Kaurismäki said that “tragicomedy seems to be my genre."Later this year, Isabel Sandoval will begin production on Tropical Gothic, the follow-up to her acclaimed 2019 feature Lingua Franca.
- 6/17/2022
- MUBI
After a prolific burst of work in the 80s and 90s, Aki Kaurismäki has taken his time this century, developing films for a number of years. Following his stellar refugee story The Other Side of Hope in 2017, the Finnish director is now mounting his return with a new film.
Variety reports he’s reteaming with cinematographer Timo Salminen to shoot his next feature, titled Dead Leaves (aka Kuolleet lehdet), beginning this August in Helsinki. Backed by B-Plan Distribution and starring Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen, plot details are currently spare. However, it’s confirmed it will be the fourth entry into his Proletariat Trilogy, which includes Shadows in Paradise, Ariel, and The Match Factory Girl.
“Tragicomedy seems to be my genre. I like to return to the themes of my youth and talk about the little man’s struggle against the faceless machine — and himself — all the while not forgetting about the humor,...
Variety reports he’s reteaming with cinematographer Timo Salminen to shoot his next feature, titled Dead Leaves (aka Kuolleet lehdet), beginning this August in Helsinki. Backed by B-Plan Distribution and starring Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen, plot details are currently spare. However, it’s confirmed it will be the fourth entry into his Proletariat Trilogy, which includes Shadows in Paradise, Ariel, and The Match Factory Girl.
“Tragicomedy seems to be my genre. I like to return to the themes of my youth and talk about the little man’s struggle against the faceless machine — and himself — all the while not forgetting about the humor,...
- 6/10/2022
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Despite teasing his retirement in 2017, “Le Havre” director Aki Kaurismäki will follow his Berlin Silver Bear winner “The Other Side of Hope” with a new feature film under the working title of “Dead Leaves” (“Kuolleet lehdet” in Finnish).
The new project was announced on Friday by Helsinki-based company B-Plan Distribution.
The film will star Alma Pöysti, who recently starred in Zaida Bergroth biopic “Tove,” about Moomins creator Tove Jansson — a film that won her a Jussi award for best actress in 2021. Jussi Vatanen, known for the drama “Forest Giant” and smash hit trilogy “Lapland Odyssey” has also joined the cast. The film’s supporting cast and crew will be announced at a later date.
“Dead Leaves,” which will mark the Finnish director’s 19th feature, will start shooting at the end of August in Helsinki. According to B-Plan Distribution, it will be the fourth instalment that continues Kaurismäki’s so-called Proletariat Trilogy,...
The new project was announced on Friday by Helsinki-based company B-Plan Distribution.
The film will star Alma Pöysti, who recently starred in Zaida Bergroth biopic “Tove,” about Moomins creator Tove Jansson — a film that won her a Jussi award for best actress in 2021. Jussi Vatanen, known for the drama “Forest Giant” and smash hit trilogy “Lapland Odyssey” has also joined the cast. The film’s supporting cast and crew will be announced at a later date.
“Dead Leaves,” which will mark the Finnish director’s 19th feature, will start shooting at the end of August in Helsinki. According to B-Plan Distribution, it will be the fourth instalment that continues Kaurismäki’s so-called Proletariat Trilogy,...
- 6/10/2022
- by Marta Balaga
- Variety Film + TV
Sometimes, the best things in life are worth waiting for. 2017 has seen the return of filmmakers like Lucrecia Martel after 9 years since her previous feature film, and while he may not have made a film as awe-inspiring or formally groundbreaking as the stunning Zama, six years is much too long to wait for yet another winner from director Aki Kaurismaki.
Over half a decade since his brilliant 2011 film Le Havre, Kaurismaki has returned with arguably his most formally inventive and politically driven film to date. Entitled The Other Side Of Hope, the director introduces viewers to the pair of Khaled and Wikstrom, two men who couldn’t have led more different lives. Sherwan Haji stars as Khaled, a man hailing from Aleppo who is seeking asylum in Helsinki. He encounters Sakari Kuosmanen’s Wikstrom, a salesman who goes from leaving his wife to ostensibly winning a restaurant in a card game.
Over half a decade since his brilliant 2011 film Le Havre, Kaurismaki has returned with arguably his most formally inventive and politically driven film to date. Entitled The Other Side Of Hope, the director introduces viewers to the pair of Khaled and Wikstrom, two men who couldn’t have led more different lives. Sherwan Haji stars as Khaled, a man hailing from Aleppo who is seeking asylum in Helsinki. He encounters Sakari Kuosmanen’s Wikstrom, a salesman who goes from leaving his wife to ostensibly winning a restaurant in a card game.
- 12/1/2017
- by Joshua Brunsting
- CriterionCast
‘The Other Side of Hope’ U.S. Trailer: Aki Kaurismäki Brings His Unique Vision to the Refugee Crisis
We’ve seen a number of excellent documentaries capture the European refugee crisis, but when Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki decided to take it on narrative form for his first film since 2011’s Le Havre, we expected his unique vision to deliver something brilliant, and he’s done just that. After premiering at Berlin International Film Festival, The Other Side of Hope will now arrive soon and the first trailer has landed.
Starring Sakari Kuosmanen and Sherwan Haji, the story follows a poker-playing restauranteur and former traveling salesman who befriends a group of refugees newly arrived from Finland. “Hope is as contemporary and vital a film as you’re likely to find in 2017, but it’s also one of the funniest and most classically (not to mention beautifully) cinematic too. Shot on gorgeous 35mm by his enduring cinematographer Timo Salminen, it’s as cleverly detailed, as it is visually stunning and right from the very beginning,...
Starring Sakari Kuosmanen and Sherwan Haji, the story follows a poker-playing restauranteur and former traveling salesman who befriends a group of refugees newly arrived from Finland. “Hope is as contemporary and vital a film as you’re likely to find in 2017, but it’s also one of the funniest and most classically (not to mention beautifully) cinematic too. Shot on gorgeous 35mm by his enduring cinematographer Timo Salminen, it’s as cleverly detailed, as it is visually stunning and right from the very beginning,...
- 11/16/2017
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
What Kiarostami is to the front seats of a car and Bresson is to the prison, so Aki Kaurismäki is to the perennial mid-80s Helsinki; that dark pastel-colored nowhere where everyone smokes and drinks and wears cheap suits. One of the many interesting things about The Other Side of Hope — a poignantly contemporaneous deadpan comedy which is surely amongst the greatest of his 20-or-so features — is that the auteur plants a Syrian refugee named Khaled (Sherwan Haji) into the center of that backwards world, as if he were a walking anachronism.
It’s a wonderful central conceit from the master filmmaker, a director who has spent a career simultaneously championing and poking fun at working class Finnish life — the fundamental melancholy of it, the want for escape and the booze. Here we’re asked to consider why a man who has just fled a war-torn country — and ended up...
It’s a wonderful central conceit from the master filmmaker, a director who has spent a career simultaneously championing and poking fun at working class Finnish life — the fundamental melancholy of it, the want for escape and the booze. Here we’re asked to consider why a man who has just fled a war-torn country — and ended up...
- 2/15/2017
- by Rory O'Connor
- The Film Stage
First image released from new film about Finnish travelling salesman who meets a Syrian refugee.
Aki Kaurismaki’s new film The Other Side Of Hope (Toivon Tuolla Puolen) has confirmed its Finnish release date of Feb 3. The Match Factory handles international sales.
The 98-minute film, shot in the early autumn in Helsinki, tells the story of a Finnish travelling salesman crossing paths with a Syrian refugee.
The Other Side Of Hope is the second instalment in Kaurismäki’s trilogy focusing on port cities, which began with Le Havre.
The lead actors are Sherwan Haji as Syrian refugee Khaled, and Sakari Kuosmanen as Wikström the salesman.
The cast also includes Janne Hyytiäinen, Nuppu Koivu and Ilkka Koivula as personnel of the “Kultainen tuoppi” restaurant owned by Wikström, and Simon Hussein Al-Bazoon playing Iraqi asylum seeker Mazdak. Other cast includes Kaija Pakarinen, Kati Outinen, Tommi Korpela and Tuomari Nurmio.
Key crew includes DoP Timo Salminen, costume designer...
Aki Kaurismaki’s new film The Other Side Of Hope (Toivon Tuolla Puolen) has confirmed its Finnish release date of Feb 3. The Match Factory handles international sales.
The 98-minute film, shot in the early autumn in Helsinki, tells the story of a Finnish travelling salesman crossing paths with a Syrian refugee.
The Other Side Of Hope is the second instalment in Kaurismäki’s trilogy focusing on port cities, which began with Le Havre.
The lead actors are Sherwan Haji as Syrian refugee Khaled, and Sakari Kuosmanen as Wikström the salesman.
The cast also includes Janne Hyytiäinen, Nuppu Koivu and Ilkka Koivula as personnel of the “Kultainen tuoppi” restaurant owned by Wikström, and Simon Hussein Al-Bazoon playing Iraqi asylum seeker Mazdak. Other cast includes Kaija Pakarinen, Kati Outinen, Tommi Korpela and Tuomari Nurmio.
Key crew includes DoP Timo Salminen, costume designer...
- 12/8/2016
- by wendy.mitchell@screendaily.com (Wendy Mitchell)
- ScreenDaily
The more “international” body of tastemaker critics have anointed Todd Haynes’ Carol, Hou Hsaio-Hsien’s The Assassin, George Miller’s Mad Max, Sean Baker’s Tangerine and Bruno Dumont’s Li’l Quinquin as the better film items for 2015 and top vote getters with the most noms for 2016 Ics Awards. Winners of the 13th Ics Awards will be announced on February 21, 2016. Here are the noms and all the categories.
Picture
• 45 Years
• Arabian Nights
• The Assassin
• Carol
• Clouds of Sils Maria
• The Duke of Burgundy
• Inside Out
• Li’l Quinquin
• Mad Max: Fury Road
• A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
• Tangerine
Director
• Sean Baker – Tangerine
• Bruno Dumont – Li’l Quinquin
• Todd Haynes – Carol
• Hou Hsaio-Hsien – The Assassin
• George Miller – Mad Max: Fury Road
Film Not In The English Language
• Amour Fou
• Arabian Nights
• The Assassin
• Hard to Be a God
• Jauja
• La Sapienza
• Li’l Quinquin
• Phoenix
• A...
Picture
• 45 Years
• Arabian Nights
• The Assassin
• Carol
• Clouds of Sils Maria
• The Duke of Burgundy
• Inside Out
• Li’l Quinquin
• Mad Max: Fury Road
• A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
• Tangerine
Director
• Sean Baker – Tangerine
• Bruno Dumont – Li’l Quinquin
• Todd Haynes – Carol
• Hou Hsaio-Hsien – The Assassin
• George Miller – Mad Max: Fury Road
Film Not In The English Language
• Amour Fou
• Arabian Nights
• The Assassin
• Hard to Be a God
• Jauja
• La Sapienza
• Li’l Quinquin
• Phoenix
• A...
- 2/8/2016
- by Eric Lavallee
- IONCINEMA.com
Like each of Lisandro Alonso‘s cinematic offerings that came before – La Libertad, Los Muertos, Fantasma and Liverpool – the Un Certain Regard debuted, Fipresci Prize winning Jauja regards the solitary man facing the exactings of life, nature and the human spirit. But something is quite different here. There seems to be some kind of scripted narrative, lavish costuming and even what many would call a proper movie star in the robustly mustachioed Viggo Mortensen. Yet by embracing these glacial shifts in the filmmaking process itself, Alonso has elevated his art from contemplatively ethnographic to something much more strange, exciting, illusive and illuminating.
For the first time in his career, Alonso parsed out something resembling a working feature length script in partnership with the Argentinian poet Fabián Casas whom he’d worked with previously on untitled Albert Serra addressed short and took on Mortensen as both his leading man producer on the project,...
For the first time in his career, Alonso parsed out something resembling a working feature length script in partnership with the Argentinian poet Fabián Casas whom he’d worked with previously on untitled Albert Serra addressed short and took on Mortensen as both his leading man producer on the project,...
- 8/25/2015
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
Jauja isn’t for everyone. This is an art western that revels in cryptic, languid surrealism, giving short shrift to conventional narrative and characterization. In short, you’ve got to have an appetite for watching a forlorn man painstakingly stumble up a rocky hill, and then down the other side. Then up another hill. And back down again. A dog shows up. More clambering. That’s Jauja, folks
Wait! Come back! It’s actually really good! Despite director Lisandro Alonso’s disregard for propulsive storytelling and snappy dialogue, Jauja is a gripping, beautiful experience, complete with a magnetic lead performance by Viggo Mortenson.
Set in the late 19th century, Mortenson plays Gunnar Dinesen, a Danish captain dispatched to Patagonia. Leading a gaggle of dissolute soldiers, Dinesen and his men scratch out an uncertain existence on a sliver of land between sea and desert. It’s never entirely clear what their mission is,...
Wait! Come back! It’s actually really good! Despite director Lisandro Alonso’s disregard for propulsive storytelling and snappy dialogue, Jauja is a gripping, beautiful experience, complete with a magnetic lead performance by Viggo Mortenson.
Set in the late 19th century, Mortenson plays Gunnar Dinesen, a Danish captain dispatched to Patagonia. Leading a gaggle of dissolute soldiers, Dinesen and his men scratch out an uncertain existence on a sliver of land between sea and desert. It’s never entirely clear what their mission is,...
- 4/6/2015
- by David James
- We Got This Covered
I’ve now seen Lisandro Alonso’s captivating, unearthly Jauja four times, and I don’t think I’m any closer to telling you what it’s all about; the more I see it, the more puzzled I am. Alonso likes to traffic in the oblique — in the blank, mysterious spaces between the ostensible realities onscreen. That sounds like a lot of hooey, but watching Jauja, which is certainly one of the best films of the year, I never once doubted that I was in the hands of a master filmmaker. For all its seeming austerity, the film pulls you along with incredible force — not unlike the way it pulls its lonely protagonist, played by Viggo Mortensen, along on his quixotic, dreamlike journey.Mortensen is onscreen by himself for much of Jauja — along with an ever-present, seemingly endless horizon, captured beautifully by Finnish cinematographer Timo Salminen’s often hauntingly still camera.
- 3/20/2015
- by Bilge Ebiri
- Vulture
Cannes - "Did you see the Lisandro Alonso?!" came the eager text from a friend not in Cannes, mere minutes after I had, indeed, seen Alonso's "Jauja" -- an Argentine western turned existential comedy turned, well, any number of alternate-dimension subgenres. I envied him his excitement. Alonso has built up a fiercely devoted band of admirers with his opaque brand of slow-cinema puzzle picture, as demonstrated in the likes of "Liverpool" and "Los Muertos"; for those of us who have never gained access to that club, "Jauja" is unlikely to bring us much closer. Intermittently playful, consistently confounding, finally petrified, it's a film of fussy, cultivated austerity; Alonsolytes will debate what it's hiding, while others will suggest "an actual movie" as the answer. Initially, improbably, it seems that we're in for more hand-holding than usual from Alonso, as proceedings open with a lengthy block of text that helpfully gives context...
- 5/21/2014
- by Guy Lodge
- Hitfix
Chicago – What is amazing about the texture of this 1992 film version of the 1848 Henri Murger novel, “La Vie de Bohéme,” is that it looks like it could have been filmed during the French New Wave period of the late 1950s/early ‘60s. The Criterion Collection offers a stunning new Blu-ray transfer of a now classic adaptation.
Rating: 4.5/5.0
Directed by Aki Kaurismäki (“Le Havre”), a Finnish filmmaker, but co-produced by France, Italy and Sweden as well, this version of “La Vie de Bohéme” – there have been over a dozen versions, including the opera “La Bohéme” and the Broadway musical “Rent” – has an international cast and beguiling black & white cinematography by Timo Salminen. It plays like a verité documentary, as all of the performers have such a naturalistic virtue in their portrayals. They are desperate but free, and even a woman searching for love cannot resist their slovenly grace. Each ne’er...
Rating: 4.5/5.0
Directed by Aki Kaurismäki (“Le Havre”), a Finnish filmmaker, but co-produced by France, Italy and Sweden as well, this version of “La Vie de Bohéme” – there have been over a dozen versions, including the opera “La Bohéme” and the Broadway musical “Rent” – has an international cast and beguiling black & white cinematography by Timo Salminen. It plays like a verité documentary, as all of the performers have such a naturalistic virtue in their portrayals. They are desperate but free, and even a woman searching for love cannot resist their slovenly grace. Each ne’er...
- 2/11/2014
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
Hunger Games DoP Tom Stern and 12 Years a Slave cinematographer Sean Bobbitt among those chosen for jury duty.
The 21st Camerimage, the International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography (Nov 16-23), has revealed the competition jurors who will judge entries at this year’s event in Bydgoszcz, Poland.
Jury members of the main competition jury are:
Tom Stern, cinematographer (Million Dollar Baby, Gran Torino, The Hunger Games);Ed Lachman, cinematographer (Erin Brockovich, The Virgin Suicides, I’m Not There);Todd McCarthy, journalist and film critic;Denis Lenoir, cinematographer (Paris, je t’aime, Righteous Kill, 88 Minutes);Adam Holender, cinematographer (Midnight Cowboy, Smoke, Fresh);Timo Salminen, cinematographer (The Man Without a Past, La Havre, The Match Factory Girl);Franz Lustig, cinematographer (Don’t Come Knocking, Land of Plenty, Palermo Shooting);Jeffrey Kimball, cinematographer (Top Gun, Mission: Impossible II, The Expendables).Polish Films Competition
Jost Vacano, the cinematographer behind several Paul Verhoeven films including Total Recall, RoboCop and [link...
The 21st Camerimage, the International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography (Nov 16-23), has revealed the competition jurors who will judge entries at this year’s event in Bydgoszcz, Poland.
Jury members of the main competition jury are:
Tom Stern, cinematographer (Million Dollar Baby, Gran Torino, The Hunger Games);Ed Lachman, cinematographer (Erin Brockovich, The Virgin Suicides, I’m Not There);Todd McCarthy, journalist and film critic;Denis Lenoir, cinematographer (Paris, je t’aime, Righteous Kill, 88 Minutes);Adam Holender, cinematographer (Midnight Cowboy, Smoke, Fresh);Timo Salminen, cinematographer (The Man Without a Past, La Havre, The Match Factory Girl);Franz Lustig, cinematographer (Don’t Come Knocking, Land of Plenty, Palermo Shooting);Jeffrey Kimball, cinematographer (Top Gun, Mission: Impossible II, The Expendables).Polish Films Competition
Jost Vacano, the cinematographer behind several Paul Verhoeven films including Total Recall, RoboCop and [link...
- 11/8/2013
- by michael.rosser@screendaily.com (Michael Rosser)
- ScreenDaily
Aki Kaurismäki’s Le Havre is a charming and engrossing fable – a sort of Fractured Fairy Tale for adults – that interprets one of today’s most contentious political issues through the director’s distinctly eccentric prism. A strong Palme d’Or contender at Cannes in 2011, Le Havre relocates classic Kaurismäki production elements from Finland to a harbor town in northern France. And, not surprisingly, the veteran director finds this sleepy Britannic burg as rife with idiosyncrasy as any snowbound suburb of Helsinki. Under thick gray clouds, Kaurismäki’s diorama of quirky characters gradually meander their way to moments of epiphany and catharsis, while viewers marvel at the director’s mystical moments of compassionate humanity and playful cinematic homage.
The film takes us through a couple of weeks in the life of Marcel Marx (Andrè Wilms), an unremarkable 60-ish shoe shiner who eeks out a living at the town’s bustling train station.
The film takes us through a couple of weeks in the life of Marcel Marx (Andrè Wilms), an unremarkable 60-ish shoe shiner who eeks out a living at the town’s bustling train station.
- 8/7/2012
- by David Anderson
- IONCINEMA.com
While many films have explored themes of post-9/11 paranoia and its resulting xenophobia, none have dared do so with the unrepentant joie de vivre of Le Havre. Rather than wallowing in overwrought melodrama or reveling in ghoulish horror, Finnish writer/director Aki Kaurismäki takes on these dark themes with a gentle hand and crafts a heartwarming tale in a world driven cold from fear of terrorism and by extension outsiders.
This buoyant comedy follows Marcel Marx (André Wilms), a bohemian-spirited shoe shiner who has grown old, but never grown up. He is in many ways a scamp as he playfully shoplifts from his local baker, teases the grousing green grocer, and indulges in glasses of wine at the local pub before returning home to his cheerful but secretly ailing wife Arletty (Kati Outinen), who dresses like an octogenarian school girl complete with romper and barrettes. Theirs is a charmed life...
This buoyant comedy follows Marcel Marx (André Wilms), a bohemian-spirited shoe shiner who has grown old, but never grown up. He is in many ways a scamp as he playfully shoplifts from his local baker, teases the grousing green grocer, and indulges in glasses of wine at the local pub before returning home to his cheerful but secretly ailing wife Arletty (Kati Outinen), who dresses like an octogenarian school girl complete with romper and barrettes. Theirs is a charmed life...
- 10/19/2011
- by jpraup@gmail.com (thefilmstage.com)
- The Film Stage
Le Havre was one of the more acclaimed films to come out of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, with Raffi praising it as “an example of a director in top form,” later putting it as an honorable mention in his roundup. That director is Aki Kaurismäki, who’s crafted a comedy centered on a shoeshiner that discovers and takes in a homeless African boy, and how the boy is pursued by a detective. The movie was picked up by Janus films almost a month ago, with a Criterion release looking very likely for the future.
And even though there are certainly moments of comedy in this trailer — particularly the opening scene — some of it also carried a certain sense of somberness to me. The plot isn’t the lightest of comedic material, after all, but I prefer that movies of this kind carry truth in them over silly gags...
And even though there are certainly moments of comedy in this trailer — particularly the opening scene — some of it also carried a certain sense of somberness to me. The plot isn’t the lightest of comedic material, after all, but I prefer that movies of this kind carry truth in them over silly gags...
- 8/23/2011
- by jpraup@gmail.com (thefilmstage.com)
- The Film Stage
Updated through 5/20.
"Since the early 1980s, Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismäki has been mining his own peculiar seam and achieving a quiet miracle — making films that gladden the heart the most when they're at their most unflappably lugubrious." Jonathan Romney for Screen: "Le Havre essentially offers us the director's usual menu — poker-faced acting, weather-beaten faces, political compassion, hyper-stylized staging and decrepit barroom interiors lit con amore. But there's something fresh in this new film, which sees the Finn fully venting his Francophilia for the first time since 1991's La Vie de Bohème."
"Le Havre is shot in the French port town, with French actors and dialogue, though Kaurismäki's repertory stalwart player Kati Outinen has a role," notes the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw. "She plays the wife of Marcel (André Wilms), a dignified, stoic man who works as a shoeshiner on the streets. Marcel witnesses an illegal immigrant boy from Gabon, Idrissa (Blondin Miguel...
"Since the early 1980s, Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismäki has been mining his own peculiar seam and achieving a quiet miracle — making films that gladden the heart the most when they're at their most unflappably lugubrious." Jonathan Romney for Screen: "Le Havre essentially offers us the director's usual menu — poker-faced acting, weather-beaten faces, political compassion, hyper-stylized staging and decrepit barroom interiors lit con amore. But there's something fresh in this new film, which sees the Finn fully venting his Francophilia for the first time since 1991's La Vie de Bohème."
"Le Havre is shot in the French port town, with French actors and dialogue, though Kaurismäki's repertory stalwart player Kati Outinen has a role," notes the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw. "She plays the wife of Marcel (André Wilms), a dignified, stoic man who works as a shoeshiner on the streets. Marcel witnesses an illegal immigrant boy from Gabon, Idrissa (Blondin Miguel...
- 5/20/2011
- MUBI
- Founded in 1988, the European Film Academy currently unites 1,700 European film professionals with the common aim of promoting Europe's film culture. Here are this year's noms.... European Film 2006 Breakfast On Pluto; Ireland/UK Directed by Neil Jordan Produced by Parallel Film Productions Ltd./Number 9 Films Grbavica; Austria/Bosnia-Herzegovina/Germany/Croatia Directed by Jasmila Zbanic Produced by Coop99 Filmproduktion Gmbh/Deblokada/Noirfilm/Jadran Film Das Leben Der Anderen (The Lives Of Others); Germany Directed by Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck Produced by Wiedemann & Berg Filmproduktion/Bayerischer Rundfunk/Arte/Creado Film The Road To Guantanamo; UK Directed by Michael Winterbottom And Mat Whitecross Produced by Revolution Films Ltd. Volver; Spain Directed by Pedro Almodovar Produced by El Deseo D.A., S.L.U. The Wind That Shakes The Barley; UK/Ireland/Germany/Italy/Spain Directed By Ken Loach Produced By Sixteen Films/Matador Pictures/Regent Capital/UK Film Council/Bord Scannan Na
- 11/6/2006
- IONCINEMA.com
Visually sublime and emotionally buoyant, Aki Kaurismaki's black-and-white silent effort "Juha" is a jewel, a beautifully crafted work suffused with the director's deadpan wit, elegantly terse narrative style and bleakly ironic pessimism found in his greatest works ("Ariel", "The Match Factory Girl"). In mood and effect, it summons up a lost art form -- telling its story in images and conveying its depth of feeling in expression and body inflection.
Shown twice at the Berlin Film Festival with a live musical accompaniment by the Anssi Tikanmaki Filmorchestra, "Juha" seems a film intended for limited, highly specialized audiences. Under any circumstances, it remains a free, intensely accessible work. Adapting a 1911 novel by Finnish author Juhani Aho, Kaurismaki creates a startling and imaginative tale of love lost and regained.
At its core, "Juha" is a love triangle of shifting emotional currents and sharp reversals. Deceptively simple couple Juha (Sakari Kuosmanen) and Marja (Kati Outinen) watch sinister "outsider" Shemeikka (Andre Wilms) undermine their bond in convincing Marja that the hulking, pleasant Juha is an unworthy mate because of a slight physical impediment. At last giving in to his seedy charm and persistent manner, Marja follows Shemeikka to Helsinki. The balance of the narrative is Juha's uncompromising quest to woo Marja back.
Working with his great cinematographer Timo Salminen, Kaurismaki draws on a deeply elemental physical style, a beautifully rhyming symphony of water, landscape and air that is the ideal visual complement to Anssi Tikanmaki's deeply ambient music. A former film critic with an encyclopedic knowledge of film history, Kaurismaki references the gracefully gliding camera work of F.W. Murnau ("The Last Laugh") and the vivid emotional force of D.W. Griffith ("Broken Blossoms").
There is also a very witty tribute to his old friend, the great American director Samuel Fuller, who appeared in his adaptation of "La vie de boheme".
The images in "Juha" sing and soar, such as the quiet, tender moment when Marja drapes Juha's arm over her in bed. There is no more wistful or quietly devastating moment than the sight of the large, ill-fitted Juha stranded on the side of the road. The one time direct sound is heard, of Shemeikka's sister (Elina Salo) performing a French song in a cafe, the moment has a stunning emotional impact, a feeling of time elegantly, dramatically being reborn.
JUHA
A Sputnik Oy production
An Aki Kaurismaki film
Director-producer-writer-editor: Aki Kaurismaki
Based on the novel by: Juhani Aho
Music: Anssi Tikanmaki
Director of photography: Timo Salminen
Production manager: Ilkka Mertsola
Sound: Jouko Lumme
Set design: Markku Patila, Jukka Salmi
Black and white/stereo
Cast:
Juha: Sakari Kuosmanen
Marja: Kati Outinen
Shemeikka: Andre Wilms
Driver: Marku Peltola
Shemeikka's sister: Elina Salo
Running time --78 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Shown twice at the Berlin Film Festival with a live musical accompaniment by the Anssi Tikanmaki Filmorchestra, "Juha" seems a film intended for limited, highly specialized audiences. Under any circumstances, it remains a free, intensely accessible work. Adapting a 1911 novel by Finnish author Juhani Aho, Kaurismaki creates a startling and imaginative tale of love lost and regained.
At its core, "Juha" is a love triangle of shifting emotional currents and sharp reversals. Deceptively simple couple Juha (Sakari Kuosmanen) and Marja (Kati Outinen) watch sinister "outsider" Shemeikka (Andre Wilms) undermine their bond in convincing Marja that the hulking, pleasant Juha is an unworthy mate because of a slight physical impediment. At last giving in to his seedy charm and persistent manner, Marja follows Shemeikka to Helsinki. The balance of the narrative is Juha's uncompromising quest to woo Marja back.
Working with his great cinematographer Timo Salminen, Kaurismaki draws on a deeply elemental physical style, a beautifully rhyming symphony of water, landscape and air that is the ideal visual complement to Anssi Tikanmaki's deeply ambient music. A former film critic with an encyclopedic knowledge of film history, Kaurismaki references the gracefully gliding camera work of F.W. Murnau ("The Last Laugh") and the vivid emotional force of D.W. Griffith ("Broken Blossoms").
There is also a very witty tribute to his old friend, the great American director Samuel Fuller, who appeared in his adaptation of "La vie de boheme".
The images in "Juha" sing and soar, such as the quiet, tender moment when Marja drapes Juha's arm over her in bed. There is no more wistful or quietly devastating moment than the sight of the large, ill-fitted Juha stranded on the side of the road. The one time direct sound is heard, of Shemeikka's sister (Elina Salo) performing a French song in a cafe, the moment has a stunning emotional impact, a feeling of time elegantly, dramatically being reborn.
JUHA
A Sputnik Oy production
An Aki Kaurismaki film
Director-producer-writer-editor: Aki Kaurismaki
Based on the novel by: Juhani Aho
Music: Anssi Tikanmaki
Director of photography: Timo Salminen
Production manager: Ilkka Mertsola
Sound: Jouko Lumme
Set design: Markku Patila, Jukka Salmi
Black and white/stereo
Cast:
Juha: Sakari Kuosmanen
Marja: Kati Outinen
Shemeikka: Andre Wilms
Driver: Marku Peltola
Shemeikka's sister: Elina Salo
Running time --78 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 2/22/1999
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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