Film Festivals

Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves – 2023 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 6

Published on May 24, 2023

Following Drifting Clouds (1996), The Man Without a Past (2002), Lights in the Dusk (2006), and 2011’s Le Havre, Finland’s favorite auteur Aki Kaurismäki returns to Cannes comp section with his fifth feature Fallen Leaves.

Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen topline a film that includes some old retro movie posters, booze, karaoke and essentially are two lonely people who meet each other by chance in the Helsinki night and try to find the first love of their lives.

Current temp: An apple pie type of film – always filling, you know what you get and zero complaints, the press screening for the Fallen Leaves put a lot of smiles on people’s faces and generous laughs from most. Blasting into the second place position on our grid (with only three votes remaining) we have an average score of 3.8 – just one notch from Glazer.

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Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).