Directed by Aki Kaurismäki  [2011]
France,Finland / Color / French with English Subtitles
93 min; Not Rated

In this warmhearted portrait of the French harbor city that gives the film its name, fate throws young African refugee Idrissa (Blondin Miguel) into the path of Marcel Marx (André Wilms), a well-spoken bohemian who works as a shoeshiner. With innate optimism and the unwavering support of his community, Marcel stands up to officials doggedly pursuing the boy for deportation. A political fairy tale that exists somewhere between the reality of contemporary France and the classic cinema of Jean-Pierre Melville and Marcel Carné, Le Havre is a charming, deadpan delight.

“Buster Keaton isn’t dead, he’s alive and well in Finland … If the name Aki Kaurismäki doesn’t mean anything to you, it should, and Le Havre may be the film to make it happen.”
- Kenneth Turan, The Los Angeles Times

“Grade: A! A perfect, deadpan, impishly optimistic fairy tale.”
- Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly

“A stylized and sentimental fairy tale about the way the world might be … Aki Kaurismäki has become a major inheritor of the comic-humanist tradition of Charlie Chaplin, Jean Renoir and Jacques Tati.”
- A.O. Scott, The New York Times

“Four stars! There is nothing cynical or cheap about it, it tells a good story with clear eyes and a level gaze, and it just plain makes you feel good.”
- Roger Ebert, The Chicago Sun-Times

“A gem! I left the theater thinking yes, there is a God who occasionally performs miracles.”
- Former NYC Mayor Ed Koch, The Westchester Guardian

“Subversively funny.”
- Joe Morgenstern, The Wall Street Journal

“Three and-a-half stars! A utopian dream of a comedy.”
- Michael Phillips, The Chicago Tribune

“Exquisite! One of the most enjoyable pictures of the year.”
- Andrew O’Hehir, Salon

“Recommended! One of Aki Kaurismäki’s warmest, most engaging films.”
- Mark Jenkins, NPR

Aki Kaurismäki, born in 1957, grew up in “the age terrorized by television,” and has tried and managed to stick to the inseparable realities of the real world and the “deep screen” that only 35 mm film – light against electronic machinations, the beauty of artisanal tradition against technological overkill – makes possible. He has never used any other material, least of all video, and is very proud for having continued the tradition of “real cinema.”

His minimalist style is all his own (and that of the great cinematographer of all his films, Timo Salminen); he never entered the Finnish Film School (as he was suspected to be “too cynical”). At the same time, his films are full of allusions, but always invisible ones, parts of a constant dialogue wherein particles of film culture reveal realities of human environment, society and psyche: as it is now, and as it was during the tender years of Aki’s childhood.