Aki Kaurismaki's Dead Leaves Alma Pöysti

Foreign Film News

Forget the Rake: Aki Kaurismäki Sets up Tragicomedy “Dead Leaves” with Alma Pöysti

Published on June 10, 2022

Some surprising news from Variety (from one of our own in Cannes Critics Panel journalist Marta Balaga) this morning with an update on Finnish cinema — we got Aki Kaurismäki moving into production on the fourth instalment that continues the so-called Proletariat Trilogy (Shadows in Paradise, Ariel, The Match Factory Girl). Dead Leaves will star Alma Pöysti (our Nicholas Bell interviewed the actress for Tove) and Jussi Vatanen. Production is expect to begin in August – so this is lining up for a possible Cannes 2023 showing. Kaurismäki’s last film The Other Side of Hope topped our Nicholas Bell’s Best of Berlinale in 2017.

We don’t have a logline yet for this 19th feature, but the filmmaker mentions that “tragicomedy seems to be my genre. I like to return to the themes of my youth and talk about the little man’s struggle against the faceless machine — and himself — all the while not forgetting about the humor.” Timo Salminen returns as the cinematographer. Production begins in August.

Related Topics:Aki Kaurismäki, Alma Pöysti, Cinema of Finland, Dead Leaves, Finnish Cinema, Jussi Vatanen, top-stories

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).