In Aki Kaurismäki's 2016 film Toivon tuolla puelella ("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 puelella returns to Kaurismäki's familiar stomping grounds of downtown Helsinki.

The film consists of two converging plotlines. In one, the aging salesman Wikström (Sakari Kuosmanen, a long... read the rest.