User Reviews

Finnish director, Aki Kaurismäki has successfully established himself as a respectable auteur in world cinema. When it was announced after the release of Kaurismäki's last film "Le Havre" (2011) that it would be followed by another film covering similar topics and themes, audiences have been anxiously waiting for his next effort. Thus, six years later, comes "The Other Side of Hope" (2017, "Beyond Hope" literally), a film that Kaurismäki wanted to get out before it was too late. One should not be surprised by such openness about the film's political agenda given Kaurismäki's usual tendencies to do so. Nor should one be surprised by the fact that "The Other Side of Hope" is everything one could expect from Kaurismäki: an immediately recognizable film belonging to the canon of his oeuvre. While some Finnish critics have been disappointed by the lack of innovation or regeneration from Kaurismäki, they have failed to appreciate that often the best artists keep doing the "same" over and over again -- think of Ozu and Hawks, for instance, both of whom Kaurismäki adores tremendously.

Like "Le Havre", "The Other Side of Hope" also tells the story about a refugee encountering a European local. The small port town of Le Havre in France has been changed to Helsinki in Finland and the North-African refugee to a Syrian. The film follows Khaled's (played by Sherwan Haji) day- to-day activities in the red tape of immigration policy, his attempts to track down his lost sister, and his conflicts with locals as well as a parallel story about a Finnish man (played by Kaurismäki regular Sakari Kuosmanen) who leaves his wife and starts up a restaurant which eventually leads him to meet Khaled.

As mentioned above, one can recognize the film as Kaurismäki's instantly. The cinematography is often static by nature (even camera movement is rather mechanic), the acting is deadpan and the actors' delivery is laconic to the bone, there is nostalgic popular music, and mise-en-scène is characterized by vintage elements from old cars to type writers as well as classic Hollywood lighting. These cinematic means often give an ironic impression which, nonetheless, never reduces the film to a parody of itself; it manages to take itself seriously while joking around, so to speak. They also constitute an extremely economic narrative where a wordless act such as the placing of a ring on a kitchen table can say more than a thousand words. In terms of tone, Kaurismäki's film lies securely in between of tragedy and comedy, cynicism and humanism, melancholy and laughter.

In this world of deep contradictions -- not only in tone, of course, but also in, say, the co- existence of vintage elements in mise-en-scène with modern technology -- Kaurismäki's characters often find themselves to be strangers. They are strangers essentially in two senses. First, they are strangers of society; they are thugs, loners, divorced, unemployed, homeless, and refugees. Second, they are strangers of existence; their being in the world is twisted in the sense that they talk absurdly little, do not notice the absurdities of the fictive world with its contradictions, stand still for long periods of time, and can suddenly announce that they will move to Mexico City for a change of scenery without giving rise to any trace of astonishment in their interlocutors.

It seems to me that Kaurismäki's phenomenology of strangeness, if I may give it such a hasty word, has gained significant new dimensions in his contemporary cinema of global ethics. The strangers of "The Other Side of Hope" find comrades in each other without a need to announce it. They are the global working class with no nation. They are a plural bunch whose shared humanity overcomes individual differences. In a key scene echoing "Le Havre", there is a moving montage of human faces as the refugees in the reception center listen to a wordless ballad by Khaled. It is a very Kaurismäki-esque moment of cinematic personality, but here the strangeness seems to articulate heavily moral meanings in particular.

While the film is unapologetically moral and political in its message and agenda, it also comes across as a good piece of cinema with a poetry all its own (that is, the cinematic poetry of Kaurismäki's cinema in general, to be precise). Like many other films by Kaurismäki, sea is an essential element, which might represent the film's success in finding a place between poetry and politics. "The Other Side of Hope" begins with a beautiful shot of the Baltic Sea. To Peter von Bagh, a Finnish film critic and historian, all cinematic images of sea are masterful. The beauty of the sea is easily captured in a way which makes everyone a master. Yet, in order for us to care about these images, something has to happen -- either in terms of story, theme, or aesthetics -- in their appropriate contexts. In this sense, Kaurismäki delivers. The other side of hope, or its vague image in the world beyond, finds its elusive face on the surface of the sea. When Peter von Bagh passed away in 2014, Kaurismäki promised to dedicate his next film to von Bagh's memory, adding that "only if it is good enough." He did.

There's no doubt about it, Aki is back once again with a wonderful film. "The Other Side of Hope" basically tells two stories. First there's an older Finnish man who opens a small restaurant. And then there's a Syrian man who finds his way to Finland in order to start a new life. As you can probably guess, these two stories find a way to connect. And in a surprisingly good and heartwarming way.

It was interesting to see the two cultures interact with each other. I love the kindness that so many characters bring with them. The film finds an excellent way to mix humour with drama while also bringing up some relevant issues. Many of the restaurant scenes are very funny and they made me laugh. While other scenes like when a character plays music from his homeland one final time before being deported almost brought a little tear to my eye. The entire thing is still packed with all the classic Kaurismäki elements. You can almost do a drinking game; "Point out all of Aki's personal tropes". I have to say that some of my favorite parts were whenever they were trying to change the restaurant in order to fit in with the modern times. It was almost metaphorical. It's like the filmmakers themselves had never changed, but the world around them did.

Timo Salminen's cinematography is on point with excellent use of framing and colors. I admire that they still use film instead of digital. Aki is very similar to Tarantino in that subject. He has said that if they weren't able to use film he would stop making movies all together. I hope this is not his final movie. I feel like he has many stories left to tell. I'll be here waiting for whenever a new one comes out, because I never get tired of the personality that comes with his work.

The Other Side of Hope tackles a timely matter, the refugee crisis in Europe in the wake of the ISIL wars, with a wry and deadpan sense of humour, resulting in a product with a lot of personality and colour. It's a Finnish film that received international attention but doesn't present the Finns themselves in a totally positive light- but then, we know the Finns haven't been the only ones to show a complete lack of humanity and empathy towards those who've suffered so much.

The film boasts a number of memorable characters, particularly Waldemar Wikström, who purchases a restaurant called The Golden Pint while looking for a new line of work after a separation. A profitable business, he is told, because people drink when times are bad, and more when times are good. He finds himself leading a staff of three Finns, then a dog, and finally Khaled, a Syrian refugee only looking for his sister. Wikström brings Khaled in after the courts decide, rather dubiously, that there is no war in Aleppo.

The Other Side of Hope isn't naive in imagining a harmonious outcome for everyone. It brings us a vision of hardships that nevertheless, with its humour and hope, inspires, and brings a smile to the face.

In Aki Kaurismäki's 2016 film TOIVON TUOLLA PUOLEN ("The Other Side of Hope"), the Finnish auteur continues a theme he explored in LE HAVRE from five years earlier: refugees fleeing to Europe and forced to survive when heartless officials and some locals are against them. While that earlier film was shot in the comparatively exotic setting of the eponymous French port, TOIVON TUOLLA PUOLEN returns to Kaurismäki's familiar stomping grounds of downtown Helsinki.

The film consists of two converging plot lines. In one, the aging salesman Wikström (Sakari Kuosmanen, a longtime member of Kaurismäki's acting stable) leaves his wife, wins a lot of money in a poker game, and decides to open a restaurant. In the other, the Syrian refugee Khaled (Sherwan Haji) arrives in Helsinki after fleeing war-torn Aleppo and wandering across half of Europe, but he is worried about his sister that he got separated with along the way. Wikström and Khaled eventually meet and become friends -- or the closest thing to friends that Kaurismäki's exaggeratedly cold and morose Finns can get to each other. Before that, however, the Wikström plot line serves to inject some humour, albeit of an extremely deadpan sort, into a film that, though Khaled, explores the depressing lives of refugees who are shuffled from one center to another and forced to wait for their cases to be processed.

For three decades now, Kaurismäki has made all his films to a very distinctive template that virtually never varies. Its characters speak a minimum of dialogue to each other and show little expression on their faces. The sets are drab in colour and deliberately anachronistic, with gadgets, vehicles or clothes from the 1950s alongside computers and mobile phones from our time. At some point, a band will appear on stage playing oldies rock, blues, or Finnish tangos as the characters look on.

TOIVON TUOLLA PUOLEN doesn't stray from that template either. Still, the script has enough fresh moments to it that it will feel worthwhile even to longtime Kaurismäki films who have sat through this template many times before. Some of the humorous bits are laugh-out-loud funny, but overall this does feel like a darker film than most of the director's work. It is ultimately a choked, restrained cry of rage at the way that refugees are treated, by a Nordic society that prides itself on fairness, equality and charity. While Kaurismäki is roughly on the left politically, several of his films have attacked the Finnish welfare state for its opaque bureaucracy and its reduction of human beings to mere papers in a government file. This film continues that critique by depicting the refugees, who come from many countries but manage to band together to lend each other help, as the sort of neighborly solidarity that Kaurismäki prefers to faceless bureaucracy.

I personally wouldn't find this the best introduction to Kaurismäki. His earlier film MIES VAILLA MENNEISYYTTÄ ("The Man Without a Past") depicted with more meat on its bone a down-on-his-luck man lost among bureaucracy, while the über-idiosyncratic romantic comedy VAROJA PARATIISISSA ("Shadows in Paradise") is one of Kaurismäki's best achievements in deadpan humour. Still, TOIVON TUOLLA PUOLEN seems to tell a story universal enough to pull on everyone's heartstrings and is worth seeing.

Remember the pretty boy Ronan Keating singing that you say it best when you say nothing at all? Of course you don't, you only listen to good music. But this could be the very motto of Finnish legendary moviemaker Aki Kaurismäki's latest. This minimalist masterpiece is so achingly simple and elegant and yet so complex in a good way, that there's no really good way to describe it, if you don't understand Kaurismäki's style already. „Toivon tuolla puolen" („The Other Side of Hope" in English, „Teispool lootust" in Estonian") is like a haiku: it can convey so much with so little words and even so little action. I can't find fitting comparisions here, but Kaurismäki comes across like Jim Jarmusch's less snobish cousin: even more concentrated on what it's like to be human and small things that life is actually made of. They both value storytelling through details but Kaurismäki's approach is more mainstreamfriendly: you don't have to invest yourself fully all the time to make sense of what's going on exactly. „Toivon tuolla puolen" offers two bittersweet stories interwining, about refugee in strange and hostile land and old entrepreneur who leaves his wife and finds fresh start in running a diner. It often feels like comedy – Kaurismäki's approach could be called Finnish version of Soviet nostalgia that many 30-year or older viewers will respond to and enjoy. Judging by Estonian premiere, it's a real crowdpleaser. But deeper down it's more about bleak and sad side of human existence: loneliness, being unwanted, trying to find purpose when everything has fallen down. And, of course, about how there's no winning with nowadays' refugee crisis – it brings suffering for everyone involved, except for maybe those who like to attack people who „shouldn't be here". I give this quietly hilarious and heartbreaking masterpiece a near- perfect score. Although it doesn't break new grounds for Kaurismäki, I can't think of a way how it could be improved in any meaningful way. The movie's not gonna satisfy everybody, nothing will, but it's almost perfect the way it is. Deceptively simple but powerful experience that you can't imagine getting from anybody else than Kaurismäki.

In modern-day Helsinki, the lives of two characters are followed: Waldemar (Sakari Kuosmanen) is beginning a new life as a single man and opening a new restaurant; and Khaled (Sherwan Haji) is a refugee from Allepo, Syria seeking asylum in Finland.

This film deserves credit for taking on a subject that continues to grab headlines and personalizes it. The Finns in this movie are mostly portrayed as generous and fair-minded with a few exceptions: some are seen as idiotic government bureaucrats (an international problem), and others are seen as downright nasty thugs (a bigger international problem).

The directing style by Aki Kaurismaki is in his usual style of being deliberately austere and distant with moments of dry humour. It works well mostly but there could have been room for a few moments of deeper emotion considering the subject matter.

A shocking twist at the end does give the film some jolt but the ambiguity of the situation (which is also far-fetched to a degree) is unsatisfying. Despite this, "The Other Side of Hope" is a fine film. As it focuses mostly on Khaled, Haji comes off as a very fine anchor for the movie. - dbamateurcritic

Saw this at the Berlinale 2017, where it was part of the official competition for the Golden Bear. The synopsis on the festival website was not really promising, but my prejudice disappeared gradually during the screening. Although the movie has a certain inclination to become a fairy tale where everyone will live happily ever after, the ending has some darker sides to downplay the assumed optimistic story. One of these darker sides lies in the several times appearing "Finland security" men, who are up to no good.

Our first main protagonist Khaled is seeking asylum in Finland. From the outside, it looks like a very clean process as far as shown to us. The idle waiting time related to the asylum application procedure does hide the rough edges we often read about, namely that asylum seekers among themselves are making trouble when seeing others with a different religion or other political position, or even worse when seeing GLBT behavior that they are not prepared to allow. Intolerance can be very problematic here, given that the people are packed together, while at the same time being bored to death, doomed to wait, unable to do anything useful. Due to their numbers and possible variations in asylum seekers, it is a sheer impossible task to sort and separate them in such a way that such troubles are prevented. In this movie, however, the asylum seekers are living harmoniously together, and help each other where they can without seeking favors in return. What does Finland do what we apparently are doing wrong in The Netherlands??

Our second main protagonist Wikström follows a completely different path. On a random morning, he leaves his wedding ring and house keys with his wife, who is clearly alcohol addicted. He sells his stock but keeps the storage space (will become unexpectedly useful later). What also proves useful is his poker face, and he succeeds in multiplying his amount of cash considerably, to the extent that he can buy a restaurant including staff. The capabilities of the restaurant staff that he takes over with the rest of the inventory and furniture, do not look very promising from the outset, but he keeps them nevertheless.

For the first 30 minutes or so, the stories of above two main protagonists run their completely separate course. We see them in turns, both paths clearly delineated, simply by having other people and another decor visible. After his asylum request being denied, and just before being transported to a plane to be sent back, Khaled escapes and starts an uncertain life on the street. He is found sleeping between the trashcans by fresh restaurateur Wikström, from which moment on their lives become mingled.

The restaurant business does not go as well as may be hoped. Given the quality of the staff that he inherited when buying the restaurant, it can be no surprise from the first day on. For example, when someone orders sardines from the menu, that seems to mean that he receives a half opened can. More humor follows later on when they try out different restaurant types, e.g. sushi being prepared out of a cooking book. Other experiments also hardly succeed. A surprise inspection is handled in a way not exactly by-the-book but they pass. These humoristic scenes are intermixed with the more serious main line of the story.

The story includes a series of lucky strikes and happy coincidences that is overwhelming, bordering on statistically impossible. But otherwise there would have been no story to tell, so who am I to complain. The musical fragments we witnessed, most in cafés or restaurants, even one where Khaled plays the sitar (is that the proper name?), albeit not relevant to the story itself, are included (I think) as ornamentation or as local folklore, or simply happened to be available and deemed a waste when left out.

All in all, this movie is much better than what the average synopsis promises. On the other hand, it is not easy to describe what it is exactly that makes the movie attractive. The serious undertone cannot be overlooked, given the hostilities encountered by Khaled, and the motivation for the denial of his asylum request is also a farce, based on wrong facts that we see refuted on TV, and gives Finland a bad name. However, the parallel story with Wikström and his restaurant takes good care of ample relief from the heavy material. I usually lower my expectations when a book or movie builds on two or more parallel story lines, by assuming that none of the stories could offer sufficient material to stand on its own feet, but this time my prejudice proved unjustified. The way both stories were mixed without disturbing the logical flow of events, may be one of the reasons this movie was awarded by the International Jury of the Berlinale 2017.

After 'Le Havre', this is Kaurismäki's second film about refugees. This is a hot topic, now even more than ever. Europe is still trying to digest the influx of refugees from Syria and Iraq, a process with major political consequences.

There is no doubt about Kaurismäki's moral position. The lead characters in 'The other side of hope' don't even discuss if they should help the Syrian refugee Khaled, they just do it as if there is no other choice. In perhaps Kaurismäki's most political scene ever, a police officer tells Khaled that Aleppo, the city where he came from, is not unsafe according to the Finnish immigration authority, so he should be deported back to Syria. Immediately after the verdict, Kaurismäki shows a news report on Finnish television about the atrocities going on in Aleppo.

The complete lack of emotions, a trademark feature of Kaurismäki's work, adds an extra dimension to the message. The refugee doesn't complain, his protectors don't discuss, the violent racists don't explain. Everything just happens.

Of course, this being a Kaurismäki film, there are the typical elements of his movies: the fifties aesthetics, the deadpan humor, the stripped-to-the-bone dialogue. Music is also an important element in this film. It is, without exception, source music from musicians playing in bars, café's or in the street. It is all sung in Finnish, but has a very bluesy feeling, perfectly matching the overall mood of the film.

The screenplay has a special structure: for the most part of the film, the viewer is watching two separate stories. One is about the refugee Khaled entering the country as a stowaway in a cargo ship, trying to find his way in society and being processed by the immigration authority. The other is about a business man trying to revive an unprofitable restaurant. Of course, the two are destined to run into each other.

Kaurismäki is one of those film makers whose style is unique and doesn't resemble anything else. For that reason alone, his work is worth watching. In this film, he adds a political message which is as urgent as can be.

Most of us have never had a 'refugee experience'. Many have read about it and some take a close interest, but usually it is something that happens to others in distant places. The confusingly labelled comedy-drama The Other Side of Hope (2017)is remarkably effective in bringing the refugee experience right into our face. Once seen, it is hard to regard it as only happening to nameless people in faraway lands.

The narrative frame has a haphazard quality about it, as if the audience has stumbled upon a vantage point from which we can see two hopeless lives randomly collide. After finally walking out on his alcoholic wife, dour Finnish salesman Waldemar (Sakari Kuosmanen) throws the sale proceeds from his business into a high-stakes poker game and makes a small fortune. After buying a run-down restaurant, he encounters Khaled (Sherwan Haji) sheltering among his rubbish bins. The Iraqi refugee had arrived in Helsinki via a coal-cargo ship while fleeing for his life. Refused refugee status and held for deportation by heartless Finnish authorities, Khaled is stateless, friendless, and homeless. Waldemar offers him work and shelter and tries to help him locate his sister who became lost while trying to escape the Syrian Civil War.

The story contains little humour. Its 'comedy-drama' label comes from totally deadpan performances that verge on absurdism, aided by a dark, almost noir filming palette. Most of the sub-titled dialogue is delivered without expression, which emphasises the heartless world into which the refugee is pushed. Dramatic situations that cry out for emotional expression are left cold, and it is this denial of the natural that most hits the viewer. For example, when the Finnish immigration official interviews Khaled for his refugee status, the honesty and sadness of his story are overwhelming yet not a trace of emotion is evident in either interviewer or interviewee. When Khaled is asked what he wants, the depth of his despair is in his words, not their expression: "I do not matter".

An element of the unexpected can add to the enjoyment of a movie, but perhaps not in this case. If you expect an entertaining comedy-drama from a nation well-known for its dark quirky humour you may be disorientated and possibly disappointed. The intention of this film is not to entertain, but to confront, inform, and engage. As global refugee problems continue unabated, The Other Side of Hope does not offer comfort or clarity, and this is reflected in its open-ended conclusion. The film's major achievement is how it makes us look directly into the face of the hopeless and hear the voice of the dispossessed. It leaves a heavy footprint.

No offense Finland, but you seem kind of weird.

An odd sense of humor pervades this film about a Syrian refugee trying to find his sister while dealing with his own struggles as an undocumented immigrant in Finland. He's befriended and aided by an aging restaurateur and his motley staff. There are lots of dead pan moments, and you're forgiven if you're not always sure whether or not you're supposed to be laughing.

One thing that struck me about this film was the vast difference between what Americans are told about European countries and their attitudes about refugees and how those countries actually feel about them. America has been shamed for not opening its doors to those in need, and I agree that it should more than it does. But we're told that Europe is altruistic and warmly embraces those fleeing from other countries. Not so in Finland, if this movie is any indication. Immigration officials roam the streets asking people for their papers, and something resembling the White Nationalist Movement seems to exist there as well, full of thugs who go around beating up people who look foreign.

I enjoyed this movie, but couldn't help but feel that it missed some opportunities to be a bit more hard hitting than it is.

Grade: B+

"The Other Side Of Hope" is a pleasant enough story and, at 110 minutes, doesn't make a pest of itself. It is part drama and (small) part comedy, but the comedy is so subtle as to be negligible. As related in the summary, an immigrant and a businessman find each other and form a friendship/partnership sort of an alliance. I wish I could relate some high points in the narrative, but this movie has neither high nor low emotional highlights.

I am trying to watch indies and foreign films as I am weary of Hollywood's tripe, but this film doesn't give you much to root for. It is too bland, and I'm sorry to say it needed a Hollywood writer to punch it up some.

The Other Side of Hope tells the story of a Syrian refugee and the challenges he meets in Finland. The film features his typical cinematographic style but the picture itself is disappointing.

It is clear that Kaurismäki is much more at ease describing Finnish people. His Finnish characters are very funny and colorful, however when it comes to the refugee characters, he becomes shy and unimaginative.

The main character Khaled is probably a very good person but he is a very boring character. More than that he does not look like a refugee; he looks neither tired, hungry or frustrated. He reminds one of a successful salesman or a post-doctorate student.

His story is not compelling and his acting is not convincing. Kaurismäki received a specific commission and when making this politically correct movie he was afraid of making fun of foreigners or their religion. He even made the character an atheist which is highly unlikely for people from this country.

Occasionally the film was funny, but only in the segments featuring Finns, The plot is not very interesting and does not have any twists or surprises. When undertaking this theme, Kaurismäki has shown that he does not know the topic or want to know it. Perhaps the biggest motivating factor was the funding he received to make this extremely politically correct picture.

Read more at: http://indie-cinema.com/2017/02/the-other-side-of-hope/

The oeuvre of Aki Kaurismäki is not as homogeneous as the oeuvre of Yasujiro Ozu, but nevertheless it is not very difficult to pinpoint some recurring elements in his films. These recurring elements are:

Helsinki, a city with long, dark winters and a somewhat dreary atmosphere.

Characters that have seen better times, accentuated by rock and roll and a lot of booze and cigarettes.

Characters that have the heart in the right place.

"The other side of hope" (2017) can be seen as a follow up of "Le Havre" (2011), Kaurismaki's previous film. Both films are about a refugee that is taken care of by a typical Kuarismäki character. This typical Kaurismäki character, with his heart in the right place, acts contrary to the current public opinion of closed borders.

Remarkable about "Le Havre" was that it was, as the title already indicates, situated outside Finland. With "The other side of hope" Kaurismäki returns to his beloved Helsinki.

More important in my opinion is that in "The other side pf hope" the relationship between the refugee and the Kaurismäki character is more balanced in the sense that the Kaurismäki characters has also just begun a new life in his own country.

The title of "The other side of hope" sounds not very optimistic. Is the other side of hope not despair? By the end of the film it turns out that it is not that dramatic. The other side of hope is more hope!

Syrian refuge Khaled arrives by sheer chance in Finland from war- torn Aleppo. We follow him as his application for asylum is processed. He is befriended by an Iraqi refuge at the refuge centre, and his journey in Finland begins here.

The officials are coldly efficient - with flashes of humanity - in a kafkaesque depiction of meaningless application of migration laws.

At the same time, Finnish businessman, Waldemar Wikström, buys a business and the two - very different - worlds of the main characters collide.

The humour is dry, the Finnish 'tango' (ballad-singing) music is wonderful, I absolutely loved it. It is worth seeing the film for this alone.

It is a super 'feel good' film, without the viewer quite being able to put a finger on why this is so.

It is the sheer humanity of it.

Dramatic enough but not vibrating enough, This is the story of Khaled, a Syrian refugee that arrives as clandestine in Finland after losing his sister's company in the beginning of his troubled difficult journey. He gets a repatriation order which he escapes secretly staying as clandestine in Finland. Then his path crosses with the traveling salesman Wikström's path. Wikström has just won a lot of money playing poker and has bought a restaurant to which he hires Khaled after meeting him by chance. This has good and bad moments and is told and showed with no special vibrating drama.

The Other Side of Hope is a Kaurismaki classic, full of bittersweet sarcasm and existentialism, if by the latter we mean an honest reflection of what is. It also contains some great music, although I sometimes think that it is how he lets music exist in his films that makes it great, rather than the music per se.

By centering his story around a Syrian refugee in Helsinki, the film brings forward the view of the migrant/refugee, and that is very important,because we do not only see the European view of the Other; Kaurismaki enters the Other's reality in modern fortress-Europe. It helps us think what it really means to be a young man/woman stuck in these postmodern concentration camps, waiting for some bureaucratic agency to review your asylum application and define, from some thousand miles away, whether the hell that you fled from can be officially called "war" or whatever. Or what it means to carry this burden and walk in the same streets with the "true Finns" or other nationalistic, xenophobic scums. It also depicts the power of solidarity, albeit in Kaurismaki's typically sarcastic manner.

Anyhow, Kaurismaki always seems to take a certain distance from the things he narrates (some call him a snobbish filmmaker, others may claim that he makes a caricature of his characters), but his magic lies on the fact that it is precisely this distance (plus tons of alcohol, apparently) that makes his films so honest and humane. There is always a certain absurdity in play, yet to me Kaurismaki does realism in the most accurate meaning of the word. You exit the cinema and you see (and hear) this absurd realism applied all over the city. This film is no exception. It may not be his "magnum opus", but his kind of artists doesn't need this bourgeois terminology at all. It is what you make of it.

Nothing is important, everything flows linearly, as in life itself. For 64 minutes, two stories are told: that of a Syrian emigrant who, by legal means, tries to receive asylum in Finland, and that of a Finnish shirt salesman, who changes his trade and buys a restaurant. However, the intersection of both stories, when the two protagonists meet, softens the drama of the migrant and turns the restaurateur and his staff into a "salvation army" of sorts, during the remaining 36 minutes. The brilliantly dry, effectively blunt and always funny Aki Kaurismaki from, for example, "Ariel" or "Hamlet Goes Business", becomes the maker of a sweetened plot (with puppy included), in which even the predictable acts of villains avoid bringing the drama to conclusions worthy of the red chronicle or the accusing pamphlet. The last great work I saw of Aki Kaurismaki was "The man without a past". In between, in anticipation of this change in register, there was "Le Havre", a "cute" melodrama that required the services of Philippe Noiret, who died five years earlier. Whatever...

"Good people everywhere" is the main message of Aki Kaurismäki, who accompanies the whole film "Toivon tuolla puolen".

The action takes place in the time of the day. A refugee from Syria Khaled (Sherwan Haji) acts like all sensible refugees who left the country in time of war - go to the police, seek refuge. After going through a complex bureaucratic apparatus of registrations, interviews and living in the Refugee Center, he finds no support in the person of the Finnish government.

Based on the analysis of the situation in Aleppo (the city where the protagonist fled), it was revealed that the conflict in the city is not at the stage that could be a threat. The Commission came to the conclusion that Khalid does not need additional protection and decides to deport him to his homeland.

That same evening, in the news on television, Kaurismäki puts a check on all the bureaucratic apparatus of the Finnish system - in Aleppo, military actions are continuing until now, the authorities find the situation in Syria "extremely disturbing".

This move, seemingly so simple, reflecting the real state of affairs, puts in one corner ordinary people, refugees, and, on the other hand, the authorities of Finland, how they relate the data presented for public viewing - through the media - and then, as they actually do, they deport Khaled to the city where military operations are taking place.

But Kaurismäki does not seek to make a furor or scandal, he as an observer philosopher compares the data he has (in other words - with us) to analyze the situation. And he does it so skillfully that he layers the second storyline - about Vikstrom (Sakari Kuosmanen) - which leaves the drinking wife, breaks with the past business, selling wholesale shirts, and starts to open the restaurant. The truth does this in a very nontrivial way.

Kuosmanen was a real discovery for me. A great actor who is at that age to play the real bosses, directors, builders of his life. Whether it's an episode in a closed poker club where Wikström plays serious people in poo-and-dust, earning himself a comfortable future, or in a business office where he rigidly frames the framework according to which he is ready to purchase an establishment, or in the restaurant itself, where he, as a matter of fact, for the first time in this business, is looking for ways to popularize the institution and earnings (of which, incidentally, there are many comical situations).

Two story lines go along along the road to connect sooner or later. And the soundtrack is exclusively live music. No recordings, records or tracks, exceptionally live performance of ordinary Finnish performers, whose singing and music penetrates into the very soul. And although the lyrics remain a mystery to ordinary ordinary spectators who are not familiar with the Finnish language, it remains clear that they all serve one purpose - to support the characters, to hold them to each other, so that everything ends on a happy note.

I heard really good comments about this movie. The story seemed interesting but it ended up really overestimated and boring. No depth in the characters and their relationships. Could be way much better but unfortunately it is not

One-time minimalist, now breaking out into something more substantial, Aki Kaurismaki here tackles the refugee crisis, explicity and beautifully, proving there's always been more to him than sometimes met the eye. "The Other Side of Hope" is set in Helsinki where Syrian refugee Khaled ends up after stowing away on a coal ship and it's here he meets former salesman, gambler and restauranteur Wilkstrom who is also embarking on a new life, albeit a less drastic one. In typical Kaurismaki style, he establishes what is happening to these two men in the first several minutes without a word being spoken.

Like "Le Havre" before it, this is Kaurismaki at his most humane; you get the impression De Sica or perhaps Ken Loach might have made this and while the acting throughout is typically deadpan both Sherwan Haji, (Khaled), and Sakari Kuesmanen, (Wilkstrom), fully inhabit their characters. In Kaurismaki's films the actors never quite feel like actors and there are moments here of documentary-like realism. Of course, we wouldn't be watching a Kaurismaki film if it wasn't fanciful on occasion and this is where Kaurismaki scores over his contemporaries; he embraces magical-realsim better than anybody. This funny, sad and deeply moving film might just turn out to be his masterpiece.

Aki Kaurismäki's film 'The Other Side of Hope' is really two films in one: the first, a deadly serious look at the life of a Syrain refugee in Finland, and the other, a deadpan comic look at the escapades of an unlikely restauranteur. Oddly, it works, with its direct abutment of light and shade, and its playful treatment of the legendary Finish characteristic of taciturnity. A nice element of the movie is it's use of music as a symbol of our common humanity. It's a simple film, but I liked it.