The other side of hope
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The other side of hope |
| Original title | Toivon tuolla puolen |
.jpg) | |
| Country of production | Finland , Germany |
| original language | Finnish , English , Arabic |
| Publishing year | 2017 |
| length | 100 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 6 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Aki Kaurismäki |
| script | Aki Kaurismäki |
| production | Aki Kaurismäki |
| camera | Timo Salminen |
| cut | Samu Heikkilä |
| occupation | |
| |
The other side of hope (original title: Toivon tuolla Puolen, English-language Festival title: The Other Side of Hope) is a feature film by Aki Kaurismäki from the year 2017 . The Finnish - German co-production is based on an original script by the director. It tells of the fate of a young Syrian refugee (portrayed by Sherwan Haji ) as well as the new beginning of an older Finnish sales representative and later restaurant owner ( Sakari Kuosmanen ), who meet in Helsinki . For a while, both form a utopian community of fate. It is the second part of Kaurismäki's port city trilogy, which he began with Le Havre (2011). According to his own statements, the director sees the two films as the prelude to a “refugee trilogy”.
The film premiered on January 25, 2017 in the Finnish city of Laitila and was released in Finnish cinemas on February 3, 2017. In Germany, The Other Side of Hope was shown for the first time on February 14, 2017 in the competition at the 67th Berlinale . The cinema release in Germany was on March 30, 2017. A total of 137,946 people in Germany saw the film in cinemas.
action
The young Syrian mechanic Khaled from Aleppo wants to flee to Europe with his sister from the civil war . Both lose sight of each other on the Balkan route . In search of his sister, Khaled wanders through Europe. In the port of Gdansk , as a stowaway, he ends up on a coal freighter that happens to take him to Helsinki. Without much hope, Khaled applies to the Finnish Police Department for asylum. In the reception center he befriends the Iraqi Mazdak, who has been in Finland for a long time. When his application was rejected and he was supposed to be deported, he managed to escape with the help of a social worker.
The married Waldemar Wikström also lives in Helsinki, where he earns his living as a shirt salesman. Arrived in the middle of life, he decides to start over. Wikström leaves his alcoholic wife and gives up his previous job. In an illegal stud poker tournament , he uses the money from the sale of his agency and wins a large sum with a straight flush . With the money won, Wikström buys the run-down eatery “Zum golden Krug” and its staff.
After Wikström had almost hit Khaled in his car, the two of them meet again one night in the courtyard of the restaurant. Khaled found a place to sleep there after being beaten up by a couple of racists and refuses to give it up. He gave Wikström a hook on the chin, only to be knocked out by the older and taller man shortly afterwards. When both of them sit at the restaurant table with bloody noses, Wikström decides to help Khaled. He gives him a place to sleep and hires him as a cleaner. By switching to Japanese cuisine, the ailing restaurant experiences a short-term success, but this is again undone by the amateurish organization of the chef.
Khaled receives forged identity papers. When Khaled's sister is finally found in a Lithuanian refugee camp with the help of Mazdak , Wikström sees to it that she is smuggled into the country by truck. But the evening after the reunion, Khaled is stabbed by the leader of the right-wing radical group. He can take care of the wound himself and support his sister in applying for asylum. Wikström returns to his wife, who has given up drinking.
reception
After the German premiere in the Berlinale competition, The Other Side of Hope was highly praised by the specialist critics and was considered the favorite for the main prize. The film came off the best of all competition films in the international reviews of the British trade magazine Screen International (3.7 out of four possible stars).
According to Verena Lueken ( Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ) , Kaurismäki has “[...] brought one of the best films to Berlin. He should get his reward for it. "Lueken referred to the" very own ", recognizable world of Kaurismäki, in which it is" melancholy and bizarre and absurd ". After his predecessor Le Havre “had something fresh” after a long time, this “urgency” can also be seen in his new film. "This attitude that something is going on again," says Lueken. Dominik Kamalzadeh ( Der Standard ) and Susan Vahabzadeh ( Süddeutsche Zeitung ) joined in the praise for the recognizable signature of a Kaurismäki film. Kamalzadeh spoke of “one of the highlights of the Berlinale competition”. The director came "to rest in his style". With the figure of Wikström, The Other Side of Hope draws “the portrait of an island of solidarity in an otherwise hopelessly brutal society”. Barbara Möller ( Die Welt ) saw a “great film”. “Formally, the film is a fairy tale. Full of warmth, although it is bathed in cool Nordic blue light. ”Kaurismäki does not stage it as a“ […] clash of cultures, but as a clash of times. Khaled comes from now; Wikström is a figure from the past. The recourse to the 1950s serves less as a stylization than as a reminder that there was a time in Europe when we were not yet dominated by materialism, ”says Möller. Peter Zander ( Berliner Morgenpost ) pointed out the big theme of the film, which Kaurismäki tells in a stylish and warm-hearted way. “The 59-year-old shoots melancholy comedies with clear colors but a laconic tone and a minimalist ambience. Despite all the jokes, he never reveals his characters, they always remain fundamentally likeable, ”said Zander, who concluded that the integration comedy was developing as a new sub-genre after works such as East Frisian for beginners , Welcome to Norway or Welcome to the Hartmanns .
Awards
The other side of hope ran in 2017 at the Berlinale in the competition for the Golden Bear , the festival's main prize. Aki Kaurismäki received the directing award . In the same year, the Dublin Film Critics Association awarded their Acting Award to Sherwan Haji. This was followed by the main prize at the Luxembourg City Film Festival 2017 and the Peace Prize for German Films - Die Brücke (main international prize). At the awarding of the European Film Prize 2017 , nominations in the categories of film and directing as well as for the audience award followed.
Web links
- Official homepage for the movie
- Film profile at berlinale.de
- The other side of hope in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release certificate for The Other Side of Hope . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; test number: 166822 / K).
- ↑ a b Barbara Möller: Refugee, are you coming to Finland . In: Die Welt , February 15, 2017, No. 39, p. 21.
- ↑ Top 100 Germany 2017 In: insidekino.com. Retrieved July 20, 2017.
- ↑ Grater, Tom: Berlin: 'The Other Side Of Hope' tops Screen's final jury grid at screendaily.com, February 20, 2017 (accessed March 16, 2017).
- ↑ Verena Lueken: Heaven over the harbor . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, February 15, 2017, No. 39, p. 12.
- ↑ Susan Vahabzadeh: The Man of the Coals . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung, February 15, 2017, p. 13.
- ↑ Dominik Kamalzadeh: Traveling without fixed goals . In: Der Standard, February 15, 2017, p. 30.
- ↑ Peter Zander: Heart made of chocolate . In: Berliner Morgenpost, February 15, 2017, No. 45, p. 16.