Title of film : The Other Side Of Hope
Director Name : Aki Kaurismaki
Cast & crew :
Producer : Aki Kaurismaki
Editor : Samu Heikkila
Cast :
Synopsis : In Helsinki a traveling salesman of men's shirts, Waldemar Vikström, leaves his wife and sells all theshirts remaining in stock. In a poker game he multiplies the sum he received and buys a restaurantwith his newly won cash. With his three employees he tries out different cuisines and culinary concepts (such as turning the place into a Sushi restaurant) in order to attract more guests. At the same time, the Syrian Khaled Ali arrives in Helsinki on a cargo ship, applying for asylum at a police station. He befriends an Iraqi refugee, Mazdak, at the refugee processing facility, who promises to help Khaled search for his sister who was lost during their journey through Southern and Eastern Europe. Khaled's application for asylum is denied, and when the police come to pick him up for deportation, one of the facility's employees helps him escape. Waldemar finds Khaled hiding between the trash containers outside his eatery. Following a fist-fight between them, Waldemar eventually hosts the famished Syrian, finds him a place to stay, gives him work at the restaurant and organizes a fake ID for him. Mazdak delivers the news that Khaled's sister was found in Lithuania, and Waldemar pays a trucker to smuggle Khaled's sister to Finland. Shortly after her arrival in Helsinki, Khaled is stabbed by an anti-immigrant racist. The next morning Khaled meets his sister in front of a police station and hides his wound from her, as she enters the police station to apply for asylum. Khaled then rests under a tree on a riverbank, when a dog belonging to Mirja, a waitress working in Waldemar's restaurant, licks his face. Khaled smokes a cigarette as he smiles, and it is left open, how (and whether) the lives of Khaled and his sister will proceed in Finland.
Director Bio : Aki Kaurismäki did a wide variety of jobs including that of a postman, dish-washer and film critic, before forming a production and distribution company, Villealfa (in homage to Jean-Luc Godard's “Alphaville” (1965)) with his older brother Mika Kaurismäki, also a film-maker. Both Aki and Mika are prolific film-makers, and together have been responsible for one-fifth of the total output of the Finnish film industry since the early 1980s, though Aki's work has found more favour abroad. His films are very short eccentric parodies of various genres (road movies, film noir, rock musicals), populated by lugubrious hard-drinking Finns.
Filmography :
