Fallen Leaves
61st New York Film Festival
September 29 - October 15, 2023
This enchanting, Cannes Jury Prize–winning love story from Finnish virtuoso Aki Kaurismäki circles around two financially strapped Helsinkians, grocery clerk Ansa (Alma Pöysti) and construction laborer Holappa (Jussi Vatanen), who keep finding and losing one another in a world that seems to be falling apart.
Ends Thursday!
- Oscar-shortlisted for Best International Feature Film (Finland)
- Jury Prize – Cannes Film Festival
- Nominated for Best Motion Picture – Non-English Language and Female Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy (Alma Pöysti) – Golden Globes
- Top 10 Film of 2023 – Cahiers du Cinéma, Film Comment, IndieWire, Time, Vanity Fair, and John Waters
Sweet-souled in story, scalpel-sharp in filmmaking precision, this enchanting love story from Finnish virtuoso Aki Kaurismäki circles around two financially strapped Helsinkians who keep finding and losing one another in a world that seems to be falling apart. Evoking dark-comic romances from his early career such as Shadows in Paradise and Ariel (NYFF27), the sardonic yet exquisitely melancholic Fallen Leaves devotes its wry, humane gaze to grocery clerk Ansa (Alma Pöysti) and construction laborer Holappa (Jussi Vatanen), who commence an on-again, off-again relationship of extreme tentativeness, while seeking employment and stability. As with the greatest of Kaurismäki’s films, everyday details register as grand, meaningful cinematic gestures. This filmmaker has scrupulously carved another fictive universe out of a handful of specific, vivid locations, yet Fallen Leaves very much takes place in the world we’re living in, which makes its surrender to hope all the more affecting. Winner of the Jury Prize at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. Finland’s official entry for Best International Feature Film at the 2024 Academy Awards. A MUBI release.
Film at Lincoln Center’s programming is generously supported by Tara Kelleher and Roy Zuckerberg.
Recommended Film Comment reading:
- Cannes 2023: Fallen Leaves
- The Film Comment Podcast: Fallen Leaves (Cannes 2023)
- Common People: Aki Kaurismäki
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Critic's Pick. Modestly scaled and tonally perfect.
—Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
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