LE HAVRE French Immigration Tale November 11, 2011

Aki Kaurismäki’s LE HAVRE premiered to much acclaim in May at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the FIPRESCI (the International Federation of Film Critics) Prize. With LE HAVRE—a spirited, sharply political, and sweetly funny tale about a struggling shoe shiner who befriends and aids a young African refugee on the run from the law—Kaurismäki (Leningrad Cowboys Go America, The Man Without a Past) has returned to feature filmmaking in France for the first time since his 1992 art-house hit La vie de bohème. LE HAVRE, which examines immigration issues in contemporary Europe with the Finnish director’s trademark whimsy, stars André Wilms, Kaurismäki standby Kati Outinen, and Jean-Pierre Darroussin. The film also screened in the San Francisco Film Society series French Cinema Now.

Winner FIPRESCI (the International Federation of Film Critics) Prize - Cannes Film Festival

SF Chronicle, Hugh Hart ‘Industry Buzz’ Column
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/06/PK441LMN8I.DTL

"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

"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

"Subversively funny." - Joe Morgenstern, The Wall Street Journal

The film’s running time is 103 minutes; it is not rated. In French; fully subtitled in English.

Official Website: http://janusfilms.com/lehavre/