THE OTHER SIDE OF HOPE Sunday Schmooze Brunch, Film, and Discussion hosted by Fred Craden

Showings

Cinema Arts Centre - Cinema 2 Sun, May 27, 2018 10:00 AM

Description

Sunday Schmooze: Brunch, Film, and Discussion hosted by Fred Craden

THE OTHER SIDE OF HOPE
(Toivon tuolla puolen)

Winner of the the Silver Bear for Best Director
at the Berlin International Film Festival

Sunday, May 27, Bagels at 10 am | Film at 11 am
Members $11 | Public $16

With his trademark dry humor and human touch, famed Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki weaves this moving comedy about a poker-playing restaurateur and former traveling salesman who befriends a group of refugees into a thoughtful exploration of the current refugee crisis.

This wry, melancholic comedy from Aki Kaurismäki, a clear-eyed response to the current refugee crisis, follows two people searching for a place to call home. Displaced Syrian Khaled (Sherwan Haji) lands in Helsinki as a stowaway; meanwhile, middle-aged salesman Wikström (Sakari Kuosmanen) leaves behind his wife and job and buys a conspicuously unprofitable seafood restaurant. After Khaled is denied asylum, he decides not to return to Aleppo—and the paths of the two men cross fortuitously. As deadpan as the best of the director’s work, and with a deep well of empathy for its down-but-not-out characters (many played by members of Kaurismäki's ever-reliable stock company), The Other Side of Hope is a bittersweet tale of human kindness in the face of official indifference. Kaurismaki has mentioned that this will be last film as a director. (Finland, 2017, 100 min., NR, Finnish/English/Arabic with English subtitles| Dir. Aki Kaurismaki)