La chimera / The Chimera (American premiere in the presence of Alice Rohrwacher)

Alice Rohrwacher: La chimera / The Chimera (IT/FR/CH 2023).

Alice Rohrwacher: La chimera / The Chimera (IT/FR/CH 2023).

La chimera - sielujen aarteet

Sheridan Opera House, Telluride Film Festival (TFF), 3 Sep 2023.

Larry Gross (TFF 2023): " Alice Rohrwacher has crafted a disquieting and beautiful dream, a tragicomic fable set in the Tuscan village of Riparbella in the 1980s. Arthur (Josh O’Connor, GOD’S OWN COUNTRY, The Crown) is a disheveled English ex-pat, fixated on a lost love. His skills as an archaeologist are misused by a group of sweet, comically inept tombaroli—tomb-raiders—who transmute the exquisite items he digs into quick bucks. O’Connor’s superb, nearly wordless performance is Chaplinesque in its spiritual purity amidst a sordid world of poverty and crime. Alba Rohrwacher, Isabella Rossellini and Carol Duarte, as the woman who might rescue Arthur, offer fine support. The central attraction, however, is the extraordinary physical world Alice Rohrwacher and her astonishing cinematographer Hélène Louvart create. LA CHIMERA has enough force and elegance to convince skeptics to believe in ghosts. " –LG (Italy-France-Switzerland, 2023, 133 m) In person: Alice Rohrwacher

Negative formats: 35 mm, Super 16 mm, 16 mm.

Festival premiere: 26 May 2023 Cannes Film Festival.

American festival premiere: 3 Sep 2023 Telluride Film Festival.
Italian premiere: 23 Nov 2023.

AA: Alice Rohrwacher's early films Corpo celeste and Le meraviglie started with the image of a light shining in the darkness. That image is also central in La chimera, the tale about the tomb raiders of Tuscany. But here the light is an agent of destruction. When light penetrates the ancient tombs, the fabulous wall paintings lose their brilliant colour in an instant, an image familiar from Fellini. The eternal dimension of the sacred is destroyed and priceless treasures turn into mundane merchandise.

In Oscar Wilde's Lady Wintermere's Fan, Lord Darlington said that a cynic is "a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing". That's what we are now. The archeologist Arthur (Josh O'Connor) faces an existential crisis in prostituting his craft.

It is more than a craft. Arthur has a sixth sense, and with a divining rod he is able to find hidden caves and tombs. Some may find this unbelievable, but Alice Rohrwacher believes in miracles. Blogging about Le meraviglie I wrote that there are people for whom there are no miracles and people for whom everything is a miracle. Rohrwacher belongs to the latter category. Also in Le meraviglie, ancient Etruscan rites were evoked, the image of the cave was meaningful, and the merciless clash between tradition and modernity was central.

At the end of the day I was tired, lost focus and need to see La chimera again. Random notes:

La chimera is an Alice Rohrwacher film but also a crime story, a thriller, an adventure (like Raiders of the Lost Ark) and a heist comedy (like Ocean's Eleven). 

A powerful image: the stinking tramp who turns out to be a brilliant archeologist. 

A community of women squatting an abandoned Riparbella train station is the counter-image to the world of abuse in La chimera.

The final images are about liberation: from confinement to freedom. Being buried in a broken tunnel. Being saved by Ariadne's thread. A flock of birds flying in the sky.

The music is jubilant and enchanting. There is a lovely theme ballad about the tomb raiders.

Hélène Louvart's cinematography is perfect in turning neorealism into magical realism.

...

P.S. 14 Aug 2025. I have just read Jé Wilson's superb review of La chimera, "Real Misfits in Real Gardens", in The New York Review of Books, of 13 Feb 2025. Wilson writes that you need to see the film more than once. I still haven't.

A Tribute to Alice Rohrwacher (Telluride Film Festival 2023)

Alice Rohrwacher. Photo: Telluride Film Festival 2023.

Sheridan Opera House, Telluride Film Festival (TFF), 3 Sep 2023.

In the presence of Alice Rohrwacher.

Opened by Jason Silverman, introduced by Julia Huntsinger, hosted by Davia Nelson, medaillon presented by Alfonso Cuarón.

Isabel Pinner (TFF 2023): " Alice Rohrwacher, a recipient of this year’s Silver Medallion, is a writer and director who has been making films for a relatively short period of time, and yet has become one of the world’s most acclaimed filmmakers. Born in Tuscany, she studied literature and philosophy at the University of Turin and screenwriting at the Holden School in Turin. Her first feature film, CORPO CELESTE (2011), the story of a young adolescent girl on the edge of her Catholic confirmation, premiered at Cannes. Her second, THE WONDERS (2014), immersed us in a fantastical Italian rural village just as it collided with the world of modern media. It won Cannes’ Grand Prix. HAPPY AS LAZZARO (2018), a transporting tale of a village stuck in a feudal loop, also won a Cannes award. And in 2022, her short film LE PUPILLE offered a magical portal into a Catholic School whose students have nowhere to go during the holidays. The film, produced by Alfonso Cuarón, was nominated for an Academy Award. "

" What lies beneath Rohrwacher’s success? Part of what makes her films memorable is that they are unlike the works of anyone else. The subject matter is metaphysical: life and death, the hidden power of history and ecology. To immerse in her works is to explore the very essence of what it is to be present, to be human. Her work intertwines past and present; she blurs the boundaries between the realms. And her writing guides us into worlds where morality is explored in shifting, complex ways. She is something of an oracle, and the works—moving, poetic, thought provoking—operate in a different sphere from contemporary cinema, inspiring deep contemplation. "

" LA CHIMERA, which premiered at Cannes this year, stars Josh O’Connor and Isabella Rossellini and explores visible and hidden histories. Etruscan artifacts play a large role, carrying meaning beyond their physical form. (A red cake in LE PUPILLE played a similar role.) What do these objects mean to us? Can they connect us more deeply to our unseen selves and our ancestors? Rohrwacher is among a short list of filmmakers who ask us to consider the sacred, the invisible, the ecstatic, the sublime. "

–Isabel Pinner (TFF 2023)

A selection of clips will be followed by the presentation of the Silver Medallion, an on-stage interview and LA CHIMERA, shown in its entirety. (TFF 2023)

AA:

The language of the interview was English. Apparently Rohrwacher wants it that way although her vocabulary is limited.

The clip reel: Tthe 50 Silver Medaillon Tribute to Alice Rohrwacher:

- Le meraviglie

- Lazzaro felice

- Omelia contadina

- Corpo celeste

- Le pupille

Asked about her early influences, Rohrwacher told us that in the countryside it was possible to see only entertainment films. The first film she saw was Look Who's Talking. At the University of Torino and the Torino Film Festival the perspective widened.

Writing? Each plant has its own process, each time it's different. Some grow fast like a mushroom, overnight. Some require time, like a big tree.

Le meraviglie was the first film in which I dealt with my own life.

La chimera is about the secret life around me, the hidden tombs of Tuscany being raided for treasures. It's like a drug. It is against the law, and against the law of the dead also. 5000 years of sacred shelter is crushed. Then the objects cease being sacred and become just things. 

Acting? Every film we start with some physical work. Actors are taken out of their comfort zone. Collaboration with my sister Alba Rohrwacher is very special. She always tells me the truth. 

Cinematography? Hélène Louvart is like the big sister of my soul. She understands the formats of 35 mm, Super 16 and 16 mm, the different layers. Work with Hélène is for me a privilege.

Q: A mix of magical realism and neorealism.

A: The visible and the invisible.

Film concert Chemi bebia / My Grandmother – with Cleaning Women (Telluride 2023)

Cleaning Women on Colorado Avenue, Telluride, 3 Sep 2023. Photo: Hanna Happo.

Kote Mikaberidze: ჩემი ბებია / Моя бабушка / Chemi bebia / My Grandmother (GE-SU 1929). 

Made possible by a donation from the Sunrise Foundation for Education & the Arts.

Galaxy, Telluride Film Festival (TFF), 3 Sep 2023.

Introduced by Alice Rohrwacher.

Mara Fortes (TFF 2023): " In Georgian director Kote Mikaberidze’s hilarious no-holds-barred satire, a hopelessly lazy paper-pusher tries to get his job back to avoid the wrath of his wife by looking for a “grandmother”—an influential bureaucrat who can provide a recommendation letter. For the worker, the quest turns into a labyrinthine excursion through the thickest red tape; the audience is thrust into a gloriously entertaining, frenetic 60 minutes, crammed with wildly imaginative visuals, camera tricks, special effects and stop-motion animation. Banned for nearly 50 years, MY GRANDMOTHER remains one of the most delightfully irreverent and peculiar comedies of the silent era. "

" The exuberant Finnish musical ensemble Cleaning Women, whose work includes scores for the films AELITA, METROPOLIS and Alice Rohrwacher’s Oscar-nominated short LE PUPILLE, bring their self-made, instruments—crafted from mangled household items and repurposed trash—to the U.S. for the first time. " –MF (Soviet Union, 1929, 61 m) In person: Cleaning Women

AA: I have previously blogged about our Film concert Chemi bebia / My Grandmother with Cleaning Women at Orion, Helsinki, 3 Feb 2017.

The Telluride film concert was the premiere of the Finnish band Cleaning Women in America.

The show was introduced by Alice Rohrwacher who told that she directed her first two films without a score or soundtrack. She loves music but did not know yet how to introduce it into a film without repeating what is already there. Film music, she said, needs to have a role, a part in the film. 

Then in 2014 she visited the Midnight Sun Film Festival in Lapland, Finland, a festival that reminds her of Telluride, both places difficult to reach. It was the last year when Peter von Bagh was present. In one his last Sodankylä morning discussions he hosted Rohrwacher.

Rohrwacher visited a silent film concert with the Cleaning Women playing to Charles Chaplin shorts, and after she festival she stayed in touch with the band whose music was "ironic, sweet, hard and punk". The communication led to Cleaning Women creating the music for Le pupille, Rohrwacher's Oscar-nominated short, screened in Telluride last year.

Most of all, according to Rohrwacher, what the music of the Cleaning Women brings to a film is character.

In Telluride, Cleaning Women performed with brio, contributing an irresistible drive to the screening.

The audience welcomed Cleaning Women with wild enthusiasm worthy of a cult rock band. They cheered, clapped and whistled. At the end there was standing ovation and a long line for photo opportunities.

"6.00 in the morning in Sodankylä. Alice Rohrwacher sings her own song near the river. And suddenly I realize that I've never heard anything so beautiful. Because she is a truly friend of beauty. Watch Le meraviglie (THE WONDERS)." Photo: Boris Nelepo. From Boris Nelepo's Facebook page, 15 June 2014, by permission.

El Conde / The Count (American premiere in the presence of Pablo Larraín and Ed Lachman)

Pablo Larraín: El Conde / The Count (CL 2023), photographed by Ed Lachman, starring Jaime Vadell as Augusto Pinochet.

Palm, Telluride Film Festival (TFF), 3 Sep 2023.

Pablo Larraín and Edward Lachman interviewed by Karen Kusama.

Larry Gross (TFF 2023): " In NERUDA, EL CLUB and NO, Pablo Larraín interrogated the legacy of Augusto Pinochet’s murderous military dictatorship in Chile, his homeland. Now, with stunning comic audacity, he confronts that same beast head on, depicting Pinochet as a vampire, part of a monstrous lineage of 250 years of European political violence. Rapacious children covet the evil one’s hidden wealth, a crazed nun hopes to subject him to an exorcism and a devious butler shares his appetite for torture. The icy, witty narration is spoken by none other than—wait for it—Margaret Thatcher! Telluride tributee Ed Lachman’s visionary black-and-white cinematography moves with astonishing fluidity through the centuries, with incisive references to Buñuel, Dreyer, and Pasolini. A work of soaring visionary intensity, Larraín has taken the history film to a funny, gruesome and terrifyingly true new sphere … and you’ll never look at a blender in quite the same way. " –LG (Chile, 2023, 110 m) In person: Pablo Larraín, Ed Lachman

Festival premiere: 31 Aug 2023 Venice Film Festival.
American festival premiere: 1 Sep 2023 Telluride Film Festival.
Chilean premiere: 7 Sep 2023.

AA: Last night we saw a modern take on the Frankenstein legend (Poor Things by Yorgos Lanthimos). This morning, Pablo Larraín surprises us with an exceptional Dracula retelling: El Conde.

As a gory horror movie, El Conde delivers. I have been puzzled and confused by the trend in recent decades to transform the vampire (for me, Death incarnate) into a romantic love object in popular fiction such as Twilight. 

El Conde is a political saga about the ageing Augusto Pinochet after his reign of terror in Chile. The Van Helsing figure is a nun about to explore the immense wealth of the Pinochet family, still hidden in the archipelago of tax havens around the world. Margaret Thatcher, the narrator, had also an unexpectedly central role in the saga covering centuries, since 18th century pre-revolutionary France. Vampires are undead, eternal, here a symbol of the impunity that protected Pinochet in England.

I had misgivings before the film, but the improbable formula works quite well. In the intelligent Q&A after the screening Larraín said that it is not clear what is the right time to tell about Pinochet: do we have the proper perspective? El Conde is an answer to that question.

The remarkable black and white cinematography has been conducted in actual black and white, not in colour turned to monochrome, by the maestro Edward Lachman.

As many during this edition of the Telluride Film Festival, Lachman commented on Tom Luddy and his uncanny talent of bringing together people who would become meaningful for each other - in this case, Pablo Larraín and Ed Lachman in El Conde.

The music track is powerful and versatile. The theme tune is the Radetzkymarsch performed by an orchestra for this film, carrying many allusions with a personal touch, not excluding humour.

The film comes to premiere on the 50th anniversary of the 1973 Chilean coup d'état. The democratically elected president Salvador Allende and his government were overthrown by the military, and Allende was killed on 11 September 1973. At the time I was performing military service at the Vekaranjärvi forest garrison. I glued on the cover of my notebook a newspaper photograph of Allende wearing a helmet and a classic AK-47 assault rifle, just like the personal weapon of us Finnish soldiers back then. I participated in the international Chilean solidarity movement and visited engrossing concerts with Chilean artists. Chile's cause was ours.

Poor Things (American premiere in the presence of Yorgos Lanthimos)

Yorgos Lanthimos: Poor Things (US/IE/GB 2023) with Emma Stone.

Werner Herzog Theater, Telluride Film Festival (TFF), 2 Sep 2023.

David Fear (TFF 2023): " Director Yorgos Lanthimos reunites with THE FAVOURITE screenwriter Tony McNamara and star Emma Stone for this funny, furious, proudly feminist take on the Frankenstein story, in which a young woman named Bella is raised from the dead by a Victorian-era scientist (Willem Dafoe). Her brain is the equivalent of an infant’s, which means she must relearn language, motor skills and manners. Then a mustachioed cad (Mark Ruffalo) educates this neo-naïf in the ways of carnal knowledge, at which point Bella discovers the joys of sex, the hypocritical sexism of 19th century polite society and, eventually, how to liberate herself from the shackles of the past and present. Co-starring Ramy Youssef, Hanna Schygulla and Jerrod Carmichael, POOR THINGS is both a sharp, witty throwback to the Pilgrim’s Progress satires of yesteryear and a scathing revision of the Prometheus myth, featuring a no-holds-barred performance from Stone as a woman who goes from victim to avenging angel. " –DF (U.S.-Ireland-U.K., 2023, 141 m) In person: Yorgos Lanthimos

Festival premiere: 1 Sep 2023 Venice Film Festival.
American festival premiere: 2 Sep 2023 Telluride Film Festival.

AA: Poor Things is an extravaganza, a film of fantasy, horror, spectacle and magic in the great tradition of Méliès, Fellini and Jeunet & Caro. Even steampunk has been evoked. It is inspired by The Bride of Frankenstein, but the horror and the science fiction are largely a framework of a bizarre militant feminist Victorian emancipation saga. The film is image-driven, and the amount of visual imagination is breathtaking from the start to literally the finish - even the final art credits are an impressive art exhibition in their own right. I might want to visit it in an art gallery. There is enough visual inspiration in this movie for a dozen regular ones. It is beyond discourse and needs to be seen and not explained. Emma Stone is stunning as Bella in the wild tale of gross ordeals from which she emerges as a survivor. Willem Dafoe has a powerful presence as the scientist who is both like Frankenstein and his monster. Gore and splatter is not avoided, nor sex and nudity. It is not gratuitous but essential to the incredible saga.

From a Finnish perspective, I am reminded of Anna Eriksson's wild rides in M (2018) and W (2022).

A Tribute to Yorgos Lanthimos (Telluride Film Festival 2023)

Yorgos Lanthimos. Telluride Film Festival 2023.

Made possible by a donation from the Burns Family.

Werner Herzog Theater, Telluride Film Festival (TFF), 2 Sep 2023-

Opened by Julia Huntsinger who remarked among other things that "sex is back" in the cinema.

David Fear (TFF 2023): " When the Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos was preparing THE FAVOURITE, his Oscar-winning period piece about a politicized love triangle in Queen Anne’s court, he put his cast through a series of tests. They would read their lines while holding hands in a circle and moving around the room, getting tangled up in each other’s limbs. Dialogue would be read as if they were experiencing labor pains, or as if invisible force fields pushed in on the performers. Occasionally, his trio of A-list movie stars would find themselves engaging in melodramatic exchanges while jumping from one tile of carpet to the next, or rolling around on the floor. "

" “It resembled nothing of what we actually shot,” Emma Stone noted when THE FAVOURITE played at Telluride in 2018. “[But] it was a very interesting way to learn that we were safe with each other, we could rely on each other, and we knew what we were saying when we started to shoot.” "

" It’s that combination of the playfully free-spirited, the primal and the purely WTF that has made Lanthimos the sort of celebrated international filmmaker that most of us associate with the glory days of foreign-language cineastes, while also earmarking him as a behind-the-camera collaborator du jour for actors like Stone, Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, Olivia Colman, Nicole Kidman and many more. His 2009 breakthrough film DOGTOOTH—about parents who imprison their now-adult children via an elaborate fictional worldview—put him on the proverbial arthousecinema map, and since, his mix of absurdist and disturbing has captivated audiences in search of something completely different. "

" Yet Lanthimos never forgets the human element behind his outré storylines and who-dosed-my-drink visual aesthetic. For example, could anyone else have turned THE LOBSTER (2015), a dystopian tale of people turning into animals if they don’t find their soul mates, into both an existential black comedy and a heartbreaking love story? THE FAVOURITE, which was filled with anachronisms and oddities, could have been too Masterpiece Theater straight or too Monty Python silly in someone else’s hands. Lanthimos crafted the exact mix of broad, ironic and brutal that this satire needed to work. "

" He’s now reunited with his FAVOURITE screenwriter Tony McNamara and star Emma Stone for POOR THINGS, an adaptation of Alasdair Gray’s novel that puts a feminist spin on the Frankenstein myth, with stylistic flourishes that draw from steampunk and Universal monster movies. It’s singular and provocative. "

" “[The word] provocative … I used to be defensive about it,” he told an interviewer once, in regards to the descriptive that gets slapped on his work. “But in the end, I realized it’s exactly right. It’s what we’re trying to do—to provoke thought and discussion and, you know, shake people up to start thinking about things in a different way.” " –David Fear (TFF 2023)

" A selection of clips will be followed by the presentation of the Silver Medallion, an on-stage interview and a screening of POOR THINGS shown in its entirety. " (TFF 2023)

AA;

The conversation was conducted in English.

The Yorgos Lanthimos TFF 50 Silver Medaillon Tribute clip reel covered:

- Kinetta
- Kynodontas / Dogtooth
- Alpeis / Alps
- The Lobster
- The Killing of a Sacred Deer - and
- The Favourite.

In the Q&A Lanthimos told about his Werdegang, starting with commercials, learning his craft in them, and then making small budget personal films in Greece, until switching to England and English-language films. In Greece, he focused on basketball and music first. There was hardly any film industry, but at the film school and in art cinemas Lanthimos discovered great film-makers such as Godard, Tarkovsky and Cassavetes and Bresson. Having been elevated to big budget films he finds out that the situation is still the same: no matter how much money there is, it is never enough. Lanthimos feels the desire to return to simplicity. On set, he tries to create a relaxed atmosphere and avoids explaining to actors. What it is about he is never able to express. Trying to explain would ruin the magic. 

Rustin (world premiere in the presence of George C. Wolfe)

George C. Wolfe: Rustin (US 2023) featuring Colman Domingo as Bayard Rustin.

Made possible by a donation from Carol Bobo.
Palm, Telluride Film Festival (TFF), 2 Sep 2023.

In the presence of George C. Wolfe, Bruce Cohen and Tonia Davis.

B. Ruby Rich (TFF 2023): " Bayard Rustin is the unsung hero of the civil rights era, the mastermind of the 1963 March on Washington and Martin Luther King’s closest confidante—until deemed a liability to “the movement” because he was a gay ex-Communist. George C. Wolfe’s period film puts character before characters and feelings before history lessons, offering political organizing as something akin to an action-adventure movie. Colman Domingo is spectacular as Rustin, bursting with intellect and charm. A new generation of Black organizers flock to him, eager to pioneer new strategies (and have fun, like Rustin). Anyone who has seen SELMA and TILL and who thinks they already know this era needn’t hesitate: this one is different. Thanks to a script by Julian Breece and Dustin Lance Black, and an all-star cast, Bayard Rustin and his legacy will be forgotten no longer. " –RR (U.S., 2023, 99 m) In person: George C. Wolfe

Festival premiere: 31 Aug 2023 Telluride Film Festival.

AA: Celebrating the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington (for Jobs and Freedom), on 28 August 1963, famous for Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. At a participation rate of 250.000 people it is a contender for the largest political rally in US history. It was a catalyst to landmark legislation: the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

The screening started with a special video address to the Telluride Film Festival by Barack Obama. Barack Obama and Michelle Obama are executive producers of Rustin.

Rustin is an engrossing historical epic about the backstory to the March on Washington, a landmark event in the history of human rights. It culminates in the march itself but omits obvious details: the "I Have a Dream" quote is missing. Instead we hear Martin Luther King declaring that "we are all God's children".

In the context of films in recent memory, Rustin can be seen as a prequel to Ava DuVernay's Selma, the account of the third march, mounted in 1965 to promote voting rights and as a reaction to the tragedy of the four little girls murdered in Birmingham.

The campaigns are a classic case of peaceful resistance, and the film is an engrossing story of the complex organisation, including security measures with no weapons allowed. 

The protagonist is a mastermind and unsung right hand man of Martin Luther King, Bayard Rustin, portrayed by the screenwriters Julian Breece and Dustin Lance Black, the dircetor George C. Wolfe and the actor Colman Domingo with warts and all. His charismatic presence and dogged willpower help create a tremendous team spirit and an atmosphere of happy optimism. The suspense of the narrative emerges from the many obstacles, conflicts and disagreements among the Black leaders, and attempts by the establishment to prevent, minimize and diminish the event.

The linear main story allows montages covering decades of recent history and flashbacks of Rustin's brutal treatment both as a Black man and a homosexual. He is outed in order to disgrace the march and to exclude him from the event of which he is a mastermind. But he is not  crushed. Neither does he lose his sunny disposition. The show goes on with him.

The film proceeds like a big party, restless and dynamic, chaotic at first, finding a firm sense of high collective spirit in the finale. The passion and energy of religion and music is central, and in the end Lenny Kravitz sings "Road to Freedom" 

Archival footage and authentic telecasts blend seamlessly in the historical drama. A great cast lights up the screen in every scene.

The Pigeon Tunnel (world premiere in the presence of Errol Morris)

Errol Morris: The Pigeon Tunnel (GB 2023) featuring David Cornwell aka John Le Carré.

Werner Herzog Theater, Telluride Film Festival (TFF), 2 Sep 2023.
In the presence of Errol Morris.

Q&A hosted by Dan Zack (The Washington Post).

Jason Silverman (TFF 2023): " During his bountiful, adventurous career, Errol Morris has interrogated roboticists, pet cemetery owners, a Holocaust denier, Stephen Hawking, a parrot, the Unabomber’s pen pal and two architects of massively deadly American wars. In talking to David Cornwell, aka the novelist John le Carré, he seems to have discovered a soulmate. Cornwell is a generous storyteller, gifting us tales of his compulsive grifter father and the hypocrisies of British society. A former spy, he deftly explodes any romance of espionage we might have. But that’s not the juiciest part. The two men, each of whom has dedicated decades to hunting the elusive nature of “truth,” seem to bond, and arrive at the same question at the same time: If we can’t know what’s real in the world, how can we know ourselves? THE PIGEON TUNNEL’s interviews were shot on a set featuring mirrored and skewed expressionist bookshelves. The effect is unsettling, and it is just right. " –JS (U.K., 2023, 90 m) In person: Errol Morris

Festival premiere: 1 Sep 2023 Telluride Film Festival.   

AA: Errol Morris started his introduction to The Pigeon Tunnel by celebrating Telluride Film Festival and Tom Luddy: "Thanks to Tom I'm a film-maker. He was a friend and a champion since the beginning".

The Pigeon Tunnel is classic Errol Morris, made particularly moving by being quite obviously a meeting of "kindred spirits": David Cornwell = John Le Carré and Errol Morris. The Q&A with Dan Zack started with attempts to define the distinction of "interview" and "interrogation". I would propose that an interview is free and voluntary and an interrogation has a formal and official character, even covering police and military procedure.

An interview can be elevated to the level of a Socratic dialogue, a common pursuit of the truth, which eludes us but which we keep approaching. And that is what is happening here, in contrast to, say Morris's films with Steve Bannon, Donald Rumsfeld and Robert S. McNamara. But also Morris's film with Stephen Hawking was clearly a meeting between strangers. Morris is one of the greatest political film-makers, and his works are important documents of political history. In his case, the past is not even past.

The basic theme is betrayal, and at the end of his life Cornwell / Le Carré (who died in 2020) states that he has no need for self-defense. Writing is his passion, and writing is a form of self-discovery. "If I knew any secrets of myself, I'd deprive myself of writing." But the inmost room is bare. There is nothing there. In a curious parallel, we are offered the tale of the secret safe of the MI6. When a professional burglar is invited to crack it, it is empty. But hidden behind the safe are the trousers of Rudolf Hess.

"Childhood is the credit balance of a writer", and Cornwell's life was marked by the figure of his father, a convicted master criminal, who thought that the world is a stage and life is a performance. He charmed his victims even after being exposed. "I don't know if he believed in God, but he thought that God believed in him." Childhood was a period of endless betrayal for the young David. Mother left the family when David was five. 

On David's  MI6 career, the mounting of the Berlin Wall was the turning-point, inspiring him to write The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Around the same time, Kim Philby was exposed as a Soviet spy, a fact that Cornwell kept pondering to the end of his life. There is a lengthy analysis in the movie about the psychology of the spy and the temptation of becoming a double-spy. It is a case of "self-imposed schitzophrenia". "He was at war with himself". The issue is addressed in a mirrored Socratic dialogue / monologue.

The film is full of re-enactments, spiced with illustrations from book covers and excerpts from movie adaptations. Visually, the film is rich and versatile. Text appears as visual matter, slow motion and superimpositions are used, as well as hall of mirror scenes. A recurrent motif is the pigeon. The pigeon tunnel is used at shooting ranges. It is also an expression for the vulnerability of defectors at the Berlin Wall.

The visual variety never distracts from the profound themes of espionage, betrayal and self-discovery.

The engrossing score by Philip Glass and Paul Leonard-Morgan provides the movie with a relentless drive.

In the Q&A after the screening Errol Morris was asked if he is going to make a movie about Donald Trump. He responded that he has already made one, a brief entry into the 2002 Academy Awards. He found Trump not stupid. Crazy? Hard to know. Trump praised King Kong ("I can identify with that") and Citizen Kane. It occurred to me that the two films have a lot in common, produced by RKO, sharing talent. Famously, Trump's analysis of Citizen Kane is: "get yourself a different woman". We heard this in Errol Morris's Trump imitation.

Kuolleet lehdet / Fallen Leaves (third viewing, Telluride 2024, American premiere in the presence of Jussi Vatanen)

Aki Kaurismäki: Kuolleet lehdet / Fallen Leaves (FI 2023) with Jussi Vatanen and Alma Pöysti.

Made possible by a donation from Elizabeth Redleaf.
Le Pierre, Telluride Film Festival (TFF), 1 Sep 2023.

In the presence of Jussi Vatanen.

Larry Gross (TFF 2023): " For more than 30 years, Aki Kaurismäki (DRIFTING CLOUDS, LE HAVRE) has crafted lucid fables about marginalized outcasts. He’s portrayed artists, laborers and immigrants with a detached tragi-comic tenderness: these are his people. Kaurismäki’s latest, a masterful distillation of prior themes, emerges as a somber romantic comedy. The down-on-his-luck Holappa (the acclaimed actor Jussi Vatanen) and the sensitive supermarket cashier Ansa (the radiant Alma Pöysti), two quiet loners, spot each other in a bar and then go to a movie together (it’s, of all things, Jim Jarmusch’s macabre THE DEAD DON’T DIE, which Ansa considers a comedy). Accidents, alcohol and their own vulnerabilities keep them apart. Will the persistence of desire draw them back together? The cinematographer Timo Salminen, a longtime Kaurismäki collaborator, paints the film’s bars, factories and rain-drenched streets in memorably saturated colors; Pöysti’s clear-eyed, sensitive gaze takes the movie straight into our hearts. " –LG (Finland, 2023, 81 m)

Festival premiere: 23 May 2023 Cannes Film Festival.

American festival premiere: 31 Aug 2023 Telluride Film Festival.

Finnish premiere: 15 Sep 2023.

AA: 
My previous blog notes: Kuolleet lehdet / Fallen Leaves at Midnight Sun Film Festival, 18 June 2023.

Kuolleet lehdet Helsinki preview, 10 Aug 2023. Review for Filmihullu 4 /2023.

The American festival premiere of Fallen Leaves takes place at Telluride, where it is screened four times. Jussi Vatanen introduces the film with grace, dignity and humour. The venue today is Le Pierre, named after Pierre Rissient, the Grand Ambassador of cinema and a very big Aki Kaurismäki buff, as was Tom Luddy.

Also in America, Aki Kaurismäki is one of the most beloved artists of world cinema. The audience is looking forward to the new film, is highly rewarded and the movie gets great buzz. The general atmosphere is that of a happy reunion with an old friend.

As a Finn, watching this in Colorado, the experience is different from my Finnish viewings. I am observing familiar Helsinki landscapes from a foreign viewpoint. As always, the vision is the antithesis of tourist propaganda. They used to say that Kaurismäki nullifies a half a century of the efforts of the Finnish Tourist Board. Indeed, it was amusing to register at the time that guests such as Ulrich Gregor and David Bordwell were amazed that Helsinki did not look like a Kaurismäki movie.

It is also entirely beside the point. It is not the duty of an artist to create picture postcards. Although the exteriors are shot on location, they are not meant to build a city symphony. They are about a worldview and soulscape with personal and universal resonance.

I found myself observing the audience to such an extent that my personal response was delayed. Watching this film, every time I cry, triggered by the performance of the Maustetytöt duo, during which for the only time the full gravity of the undercurrent becomes explicit. 

Back in Helsinki, on Thursday 7 September 2023 (online 5 September 2023), I read from the print issue of Helsingin Sanomat an Aki Kaurismäki interview with Vesa Sirén, with the headline "Alcohol Destroyed My Life". An exceptionally candid and surprising interview.

On Monday 11 September 2023 Yle the Finnish Broadcasting Company releases an equally frank interview by Janne Sundqvist with Aki Kaurismäki.

...

On the third screening I realize errors in my Filmihullu review based on two screenings only. One should always see a film three times before writing a review (which is why I don't call my blog entries reviews but rough notes). There was reportedly no screener available in the summer.

Seeing Kuolleet lehdet in America I register more sharply how absolutely the Kaurismäki world is a Gegenbild, counter-image, to the notion of Finland as "the happiest country in the world". 

More profoundly, on repeated viewings it becomes clearer how Aki Kaurismäki's sonority has grown. Everything resonates more richly.

...

P.S. 1 Jan 2024: visiting cafés and restaurants and doing shopping I sense a new kind of quiet unrest among the staffs. Perhaps the pandemic has increased pressure. Work burdens grow while living gets harder and wages lag behind. Every day we read news reports about an increasingly obscene inequality in a world where the rich get richer and the poor ones get less.

And there is The Question: is there a future? Maybe Aki Kaurismäki taps into such global unrest in Fallen Leaves. As do Maustetytöt, now on an international tour.

The Holdovers (world premiere in the presence of Alexander Payne)

Alexander Payne: The Holdovers (US 2023) with Dominic Sessa (Angus), Paul Giamatti (Paul) and Da'Vine Joy Randolph (Mary).

Made possible by a donation from Matthew H. & Natalie Bernstein.
Palm, Telluride Film Festival (TFF), 1 Sep 2023.

Larry Gross (TFF 2023): " Paul (Paul Giamatti), an aging classics professor at an elite New England prep school, is at odds with his students. His rigidly judgmental teaching methods are, to say the least, outdated. When he is thrown together for a long Christmas break with Angus (Dominic Sessa), a smart, charismatic and self-destructive teen, and Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), the school’s grieving cook, we enter territory that reminds us of John Hughes’ THE BREAKFAST CLUB … but David Hemingson’s nuanced script has much more in its mind. Giamatti is effortlessly commanding from the start, and Sessa and Randolph are outstanding. In ABOUT SCHMIDT, SIDEWAYS and NEBRASKA, director Alexander Payne proved himself a master in depicting isolated people forced to confront their fears and illusions. Here, his uncanny grasp of the minute particulars of everyday conflict reaches new depths of both comedy and pain, in a blend reminiscent of Hal Ashby’s finest works. " –LG (U.S., 2023, 133 m) In person: Alexander Payne

Festival premiere: 31 Aug 2023 Telluride Film Festival.

AA: Alexander Payne is at his best in The Holdovers, a character-driven drama set in a New England elite school. The film milieu is a compendium of location shooting in five different schools. It takes place at Christmastime in 1970, and the timeframe continues beyond the New Year celebration in 1971.

Written by David Hemingson, the well-plotted movie is gratifying in psychological wisdom. The cast of characters is gradually reduced to a trio of "holdovers", the professor (Paul Giamatti at his very best), Angus (Dominic Sessa in a remarkable feature film debut) and Mary (the talented comedienne Da'Vine Joy Randolph expanding her scope to drama and tragedy, proving again that a great comedian is great also in tragedy).

Paul has been punished to stay at the school for the duration of the Christmas holiday because he has refused to tweak grades for a son of a prominent donor. Everybody hates Paul who is undiplomatic and crass. But his sense of integrity is high. He sees his essential contribution to the future of his students in asking them to try their best. In the engrossing climax Paul stands up against the headmaster to defend the problem student Angus whose unique character and talent he has learned to admire during their Christmastime adventure.

Angus the problem student is first seen as a rich spoiled kid, but during the holiday weeks we learn new, disturbing features of his Werdegang, shatteringly in a forbidden "field trip" to Boston. There Angus takes us to a nursing home to meet his despondent father who has lost his mental balance. In each successive scene we register more clearly how little we know about his family situation.

Mary, the Black head cook of the school, has lost her beloved son Curtis, killed in action in the Vietnam War. She has decided to remain at the school because it is her memorial for the high hopes she had had of a better future for her talented son. Because of their lack of financial means, Mary had not been able to send Curtis to college, and thus he did not have student deferment unlike his classmates. The Holdovers is the second remarkable film I have recently seen about the theme of inequality in American higher education: it was also central in James Gray's Armageddon Time.

The excellent cinematography is by Eigil Bryld, subtle and rich in the colour world of wintertime Massachusetts. Music is essential: the composer Mark Orton creates a score finely expressing the humour and the emotion of the narrative. The soundtrack is also a "greatest hits of Christmas tunes", appealing without evading the obvious. Paul's character is evident in the diegetic music: the slow movement of Beethoven's fifth piano concerto and Händel's "Ombra mai fu". An amusing feature is Mary being the disc jockey at the Christmas party, stubbornly avoiding contemporary pop hits.

Among the strengths of the film is a deeply felt authenticity in the university world. It is also an offbeat but profound celebration of the study of the classical Antiquity. And a vision of America during wartime.

Wildcat (world premiere in the presence of Ethan Hawke)

Ethan Hawke: Wildcat (US 2023) starring Maya Hawke as Flannery O'Connor.

Palm, Telluride Film Festival (TFF), 1 Sep 2023.
Introduced by Ethan Hawke, hosted by Julia Huntsinger.

Larry Gross, TFF 2023: " Maya Hawke stars in and co-produced this imaginative depiction of crucially formative moments in the life of Flannery O’Connor, one of 20th century America’s most celebrated novelists and short-story writers. Writer-director Ethan Hawke and co-screenwriter Shelby Gaines entertainingly dramatize scenes from O’Connor’s admired stories—The Life You Save May Be Your Own, Revelation, Good Country People and Everything That Rises Must Converge—placing them in the poignant context of O’Connor’s intense religious concerns, and her struggle with the dire illness that threatened to overwhelm her. Ms. Hawke triumphantly embodies the artist’s unmatched combination of bitter humor, incisive intelligence and spiritual vulnerability. Touching support is provided by Philip Ettinger as O’Connor’s distant but admiring friend, the poet Robert ‘Cal’ Lowell, and by Laura Linney as Flannery’s mother Regina, who barely comprehended her daughter’s genius but was heroically dedicated to keeping her alive. "  –LG (U.S., 2023, 105 m) In person: Ethan Hawke

Festival premiere: 1 Sep 2023 Telluride Film Festival.

AA: Ethan Hawke's Wildcat is a character-driven, performance-driven and nonlinear Bildungsroman of the author Flannery O'Connor, master of the Southern Gothic. O'Connor lived in Georgia; the location shooting was conducted in Kentucky.

Wildcat is a labour of love for Maya Hawke, the star and the co-producer and her father the director. O'Connor's world is covered in its many aspects including a profound affiliation with the Catholic church and a vivid interest in birds, particularly peacocks. Males provide an endless series of disappointments - and grotesque material for stories. "A good man is hard to find". Indeed. Life in the 1940s is marked by racism, open and implicit, confronted by O'Connor. She does not shrink away from freaks and lunatics.

O'Connor is a loner and a stranger. In the South, her loving mother and nearest circle do not understand her literary calling. They would expect another Gone With the Wind rather than dark stories published in Partisan Review. In Northern literary circles there is a chilling distance to her Southern legacy. Her early contacts with the book publishing world are discouraging, but she does not give up her urge to write a new kind of novel.

O'Connor falls lethally ill with lupus / SLE, like her father (lupus originally means "wolf"). She catches a cold in an unheated train. She loses a leg and moves with the help of a prosthesis and crutches. Eventually she commits herself to her study and produces an impressive body of work despite her illness. The film ends on the brink of O'Connor's literary breakthrough. In end captions we learn how the wolf finally came to claim Flannery O'Connor.

Religion in its many manifestations fascinates O'Connor. Kitsch Jesus figures, bleeding tattoos covering an entire back, sacred spaces of churches. In a particularly moving scene a priest (Liam Neeson) visits the suffering O'Connor on her sickbed. Religion has an unusual relationship to artistic calling. "Creativity is nature manifest in us". O'Connor's whole parcours appears as a Calvary.

The performance of Maya Hawke is daring and extraordinary. Laura Linney is also exceptional as Flannery's mother. This is not a regular "illustrated classics" kind of biopic. The pain and the passion is evident everywhere. All other performances are also pitched to the highly charged wavelength. Scenes are relentlessly driven to a high level of impact. Mental imbalance is not ignored; it is flaunted.

The inspired and original cinematography by Steve Cosens and the haunting music by Latham Gaines and Shelby Gaines are essential in Hawke's Gesamtkunstwerk. The parts are formidable, but I fail to be fully moved by the whole. There is the issue of the indescribable secret core, the inner drive, the underlying urge that could create an irresistible current from the beginning to the end.

P.S. 9 September 2023. I have been aware of Flannery O'Connor for decades but never read her. I have only seen John Huston's powerful film adaptation Wise Blood. In Telluride, inspired by Wildat, I bought two Flannery O'Connor volumes, including the complete stories, at the Between the Covers bookstore.

Anselm - Das Rauschen der Zeit / Anselm (3D) (American premiere in the presence of Wim Wenders)

Wim Wenders: Anselm (DE 2023) featuring Anselm Kiefer. The finale.

Wim Wenders: Anselm (DE 2023) featuring Anselm Kiefer.

Le Bruit du temps, Anselm Kiefer.

Finnish premiere, 28 June 2024.

Sheridan Opera House, Telluride Film Festival (TFF), Thursday 31 Aug 2023.

Larry Gross (TFF Program Catalog 2023): " For 50 years, Anselm Kiefer’s unflinching, unrelenting, often monumental paintings, photographs and sculptures have interrogated the tragic nature of modern German history. “Brutal and exquisite,” the critic Peter Schjeldahl wrote in description, “operatic and hushed.” Now friend Wim Wenders, who began his career at the same time, has crafted a hauntingly beautiful study of Kiefer’s astounding accomplishments. Working again with cinematographer Franz Lustig (PINA), Wenders creates a sensuous 3D immersion into the vast factory-studio spaces where Kiefer works. The film takes its libretto from Paul Celan’s Holocaust-themed poetry as it patiently reconstructs German history, and clarifies the artistic and cultural forces that formed Kiefer’s life-long obsessions. The film feels collaborative; the most moving moments demonstrate the love, understanding and respect of one artist for another." –LG (Germany, 2023, 93 m) In person: Wim Wenders "

Languages: German and English.

Festival premiere: 17 May 2023 Cannes Film Festival.

AA: A visionary documentary film on Anselm Kiefer with enactments starring Anton Wenders as the child and Daniel Kiefer as the young man Anselm.

Wim Wenders is at his best in Anselm, which instantly ranks among the greatest films about an artist, to be compared with Le Mystère Picasso, Lust for Life, Andrei Rublev and Nran guyne / Sayat Nova. The cinema of Wim Wenders finds new horizons thanks to Kiefer, and Kiefer's art acquires a new domain thanks to Wenders.

We are immersed in the art worlds of Kiefer. At the same time, the film is a classical documentary of Kiefer's studio-factories which invite comparisons with the bottegas of the Renaissance as well as The Factory of Andy Warhol. This is industrial-artisanal work using factory equipment, but flowing from a compelling source of creativity.

Kiefer's work is a coming to terms with history. The scope is monumental, but monuments emerge as ruins. Kiefer's landscape art is a vision of the destruction of total war. His human figures are often mere clothes without heads. 

Two poets are central, and both also appear in historical inserts, reciting their poems: Paul Celan ("Todesfuge") and Ingeborg Bachmann ("Exil"). A major fellow artist in historical footage is Joseph Beuys ("Rettet den Wald"). A mystery figure is Martin Heidegger whose Sein und Zeit is a major influence but whose silence about the Nazi past remains incomprehensible.

André Bazin noted about Le Mystère Picasso that it is not a film about paintings but painting. Likewise, Anselm is a film about the artist at work, the act of painting - indeed, action painting in a special and powerful sense. Anselm Kiefer burns the surface of his works and uses tools of arts and crafts to forge and twist them. Boundaries between painting, sculpture, environmental art and installation art vanish. Kiefer is a master of abstract expressionism, but his work has a strong representational drive, harrowingly twisted.

Kiefer's mission is historical, and his memory project runs parallel with Germany's Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the past) project.

Kiefer sees himself as a mythological artist, who is also redeeming myths from Nazi abuse. The final image (see above) is an expression of the Icarus myth.

Kiefer's cosmology of destruction keeps being updated in various countries, significantly in the United States, but also in venerable premises in Venice, where the Renaissance parallel is devastating.

The cinematography in 6K digital, Academy and 3D is extraordinary with multiple superimpositions, epic visions and combinations of historical and newly shot footage. The 3D experience is superior to Wenders's previous overture in the technology, the Pina Bausch documentary.

Wenders's visionary approach to destruction has affinities with Tarkovsky's films such as Stalker. Wenders has always had a special insight in the world of childhood, and in this movie it appears in affectionate sequences starring children of both artists' families, Wenders and Kiefer. The world of childhood emerges as a Gegenbild (counter-image) to the destruction.

One of the best films of the year. After the film started I soon knew that I want to see it again.

A Tribute to Wim Wenders (Telluride Film Festival 2023)

Wim Wenders. Photo: Telluride Film Festival.

Sheridan Opera House, Telluride Film Festival (TFF), Thursday 31 Aug 2023.
A Tribute to Wim Wenders.

Evening opened by Jason Silverman.

Hosted by Rajendra Roy (MoMA).
"50. Silver Medaillon Tribute" clip show of Wim Wenders's films.

Silver Medaillon given by Werner Herzog.
Made possible by a donation from Katrine & Bill Formby.

TFF 2023 program note: " It says something essential about Wim Wenders that, at 78, he’s bringing two new films to Telluride this year. One, the feature PERFECT DAYS, is a work of penetrating stillness, quiet as a meditation, while the other—his documentary ANSELM—uses cutting-edge, 3D, 6K technology to swoop around the monumental provocations of the German artist Anselm Kiefer. The first was shot in 16 days, with a handheld camera, often without rehearsals and picking up images along the way; the other required more than two years of work with cameras mounted on drones and platforms. PERFECT DAYS, unfolding entirely in Japanese, radiates a beautiful simplicity beyond the reach of words; ANSELM centers around a contemporary and compatriot of the director, one known for doing furious battle with the highly specific details of his German past. "

" In both works, however, Wenders is giving us images of a life well lived and the possibility of change. He’s reminding us that we don’t have to be hostage to a world of fluff and distraction and that art can give us the medicine we urgently need. This blend of hopefulness and realism has been his signature through more than fifty years of films such as PARIS, TEXAS, WINGS OF DESIRE and THE BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB: he transports us into heartbreaking stories of fractured families and people living on the streets, and yet he’s constantly offering portraits of others—worried angels, the musicians of Cuba, the global photographer Sebastião Salgado, Pope Francis—who dedicate their lives to trying to relieve the pain. "

" Wenders was, famously, one of the creators of the New German Cinema movement in the 1970s, with his often existential road movies; his examination of loneliness and dreams has taken him from aboriginal Australia to Lisbon. He has worked with some of the leading musicians of our time, given us the transcendent dance performances of Pina Bausch, made films on fashion and architecture, uncovered the soul of Berlin and Tokyo. "

" But all his wide-ranging explorations have ultimately been lit up by a profound concern with our spiritual well-being. He is—to use a word that he has invoked—a “Menschenfreund,” or friend of all humanity. Hirayama, the heart of PERFECT DAYS, offers an almost saintly vision of steadiness and self-erasure; Anselm Kiefer is among the most combative and even swaggering of artists, ensuring we don’t look away from reality. Both, however, refuse to give in to a world of thoughtlessness and carelessness; each has his own way of finding something disciplined and true. In the end, Wim Wenders is one of our greatest singers of possibility. "

–Pico Iyer (TFF 2023)

The program includes a selection of clips, the presentation of the Silver Medallion and an on-stage interview, followed by ANSELM shown in its entirety on Thursday (see opposite page) and PERFECT DAYS (see opposite page) shown in its entirety on Friday. (TFF 2023 program note)

Language: English only.

AA: The deeply moving tribute evening started with an eloquent selection of clips from Alice in den Städten, Der amerikanische Freund, Paris, Texas, Der Himmel über Berlin, The Buena Vista Social Club, Pina, Das Salz der Erde and Alice in den Städten once again.

Werner Herzog and Wim Wenders reminisced their first meeting at the film school where Wim was a student while Werner had already made films, including Lebenszeichen. The lesson that remained from Werner: "break the rules".

The discussion led to Tom Luddy (1943-2023). Wim had bought a hat in order to bare his head in honour of him. Tom introduced Wim to the West, arranged an early Wenders retrospective with two films only, and guided him to get a car and travel to Telluride via Monument Valley. "Paris, Texas would not exist without him". At Moscow Film Festival, Wim was invited to present Paris, Texas in a giant cinema for 1500. The hosts desperately wanted to welcome a big American female star. There was none. Tom found a solution: his wife Monique Montgomery was there, took the stage and received a tremendous applause. Nobody noticed that she does not appear in the movie.

Wenders loves photography, but "nothing escapes painting". Anselm Kiefer and Wenders are agemates, both born in 1945, by the Rhine, on opposite sides. They shared the same childhood experience of reconstruction after the war. 

Kuolleet lehdet / Fallen Leaves (revisited in a press screening)

Aki Kaurismäki: Kuolleet lehdet / Fallen Leaves (FI 2023) with Alma Pöysti (Ansa) and Jussi Vatanen (Holappa).

REVIEW FOR FILMIHULLU MAGAZINE 4/2023 (SODANKYLÄ SPECIAL, MIDNIGHT SUN FILM FESTIVAL 2023 ISSUE)

KUOLLEET LEHDET

Antti Alanen

Kuolleet lehdet on Aki Kaurismäen välitilinpäätös ja yhteenveto. Se on myös uudelleenarvio ja päivitys uudelle sukupolvelle. Päätähdet ovat uusia. Mukana on avaus nuoreen muusikkopolveen. Alkoholismi on pääteemana uusi. Ja uusi näkökulma on se, että aktiivinen, positiivinen päähenkilö on nainen.

Kieltämättä Kaurismäki toistaa itseään, näin se vain on, ja samassa mielessä kuin Yasujiro Ozu toisti. Osa puitteista on tuttuja, osa uusia. Erot eivät ole pieniä. Kaurismäen viimeisimmän tuotannon jokaisessa elokuvassa on nähty näkökulman, lähestymistavan ja samastumisrakenteen muutos. Kuolleet lehdet on alusta asti saanut katsojilta, myös nuorimmilta, poikkeuksellisen lämmintä vastakaikua, mutta ehkä antoisin se on niille, jotka tuntevat Kaurismäen aikaisempaa tuotantoa.

Kaurismäki kutsuu elokuvaansa ”työläistrilogian neljänneksi osaksi”, kuten Spede Pasanen kutsui Häpy endkö? -elokuvaa ”Turhapuro-trilogian neljänneksi osaksi”. Kuolleissa lehdissä työläistrilogia päivitetään prekariaatin aikakaudelle. Siinä on yhtymäkohtia myös Kaurismäen Suomi-trilogiaan ja viimeistä osaa vailla olevaan satamatrilogiaan.

Hufvudstadsbladetin elokuvakriitikko Hans Sundström (1950–2017) kirjoitti yhtenä viimeisistä arvosteluistaan parhaan kritiikin Kaurismäen edellisestä elokuvasta Toivon tuolla puolen. Siinä hän kiteytti ohjaajan ominaislaadun: "Kaurismäkiland är ett universum som finner sin egenart i den rätta skärningspunkten vad närhet och avstånd till verkligheten beträffar." Lause on vaikea suomentaa, mutta se tarkoittaa suurin piirtein: ”Kaurismäkimaa on maailmankaikkeus, jonka ominaislaadun määrittää oikea leikkauspiste todellisuuskuvauksen ja todellisuuspaon välillä.”

Päähenkilö on muukalainen, sivullinen, fiktion suurella linjalla Dostojevskista eksistentialismin kautta Bressoniin ja Scorseseen. Hän on työtön, syrjäytynyt, yksinäinen, lainsuojaton, rikollinen, muistinsa menettänyt, Syyrian pakolainen, lapsi tai boheemi taiteilija. Vieras tässä maailmassa, paitsi marginaalissa ja periferiassa. Nyt päähenkilöt ovat prekariaattiin kuuluvia työläisiä. He sinnittelevät pätkätöiden armoilla, aina vaarassa pudota turvaverkkojen ulkopuolelle.

Alkoholi on ollut aina näkyvä osa Kaurismäen maailmaa. Kuolleissa lehdissä se on ensi kertaa pääteema, ja käsittely on vakavaa. Se ei ole helppoa. Olen ammatiltani sekä journalisti että elokuvaihminen. Koko ikäni olen nähnyt kollegojeni kummallakin alalla tuhoutuvan alkoholiin. Alkoholi on elefantti olohuoneessa ja työpaikalla, ja sitä peittää valheen ja elämänvalheen suojamuuri. Teeskentelemme, ettei sitä ole, ja autamme salaamaan sen muilta.

Kaurismäki on kuvannut irtautumista alkoholista aikaisemminkin. Elokuvassa Kauas pilvet karkaavat kokki Lajunen (Markku Peltola) kuntoutetaan puliukkojen remmistä töihin uuteen ravintolaan. Kuolleissa lehdissä alkoholistin pelastaa rakkaus ja Nainen. Teemana ei ole ”miksi naiset rakastuvat renttuihin”, päinvastoin. Huomattuaan Holapan alkoholismin Ansa toteaa: ”Isä kuoli viinaan, samoin veli. Äiti kuoli suruun. En huoli juoppoa”.

Alkoholisti Holappana on Suomen rakastetuimpiin näyttelijöihin kuuluva Jussi Vatanen, ensi kertaa Kaurismäen elokuvassa. Hän sulautuu siihen täydellisesti ja tuo samalla uuden tulokulman. Alkoholismi on suuri mysteeri, jonka taustasta saamme vain aavistuksia. Se liittyy masennukseen, yksinäisyyteen ja ujouteen. Se vain pahentaa niitä. Se on tapa nopeuttaa kuolemaa. Holappa saa potkut töistä ja pakit naiselta. Sammunut on altis pahoinpitelylle, ryöstölle ja tapaturmalle. 

Vatanen on profiloitunut sekä koomisissa että traagisissa rooleissa. Jo Napapiirin sankarit -sarjan pitkäaikaistyötön Janne tuli lähelle Kaurismäen maailmaa. Vuoden 2017 Tuntemattomassa sotilaassa Vatanen näytteli suomalaisen fiktion ihailluinta mieshahmoa, Koskelaa, ja teki kolmesta filmatisoinnista parhaan tulkinnan, tuoden siihen uutta, kouraisevaa syvyyttä.

Naispääroolissa Ansana on Alma Pöysti, joka tunnetaan sekä Suomessa että Ruotsissa, sekä Peppi Pitkätossuna että Tshehov-näyttelijänä, sekä Tove Janssonina että August Strindbergin Neiti Juliena. Suurin tuuletus Kaurismäkilandiassa on se, että ensi kertaa primus motor, aktiivinen, positiivinen päähenkilö, on nainen. Kati Outinen on ollut päärooleissaan tasavertainen, ja kun hän on ollut ensisijainen päähenkilö, kyseessä on ollut Tulitikkutehtaan tytön kostotragedia. Alma Pöysti on saanut toisenlaisen roolin, ja hänellä on rikas ilmaisurekisteri, jossa on herkkyyttä ja lujuutta, sisua ja oikeustajua. Ansa ei ole naiivi, mutta pettymyksistä huolimatta hän on säilyttänyt elämänuskonsa. Hänellä on sydämessään auringonpaistetta, joka on ratkaisevan tärkeä vastavoima olemassaolon taistelussa.

Aki Kaurismäen maailmassa on ollut elokuvakoiria vuosikymmenien varrella useassa sukupolvessa, ja Kuolleissa lehdissä esiintyy Alma, roolinimenään Chaplin. Nimikuuluin on Karkkilan elokuvateatterille nimensäkin antanut Laika. Se oli saanut nimensä maailman ensimmäisestä avaruuskoirasta. Kaurismäen kaikki koirat ovat avaruuskoiria. Ne ovat fyysisiä ja metafyysisiä. Ne tuovat taivaasta viestin ehdottomasta ystävällisyydestä.

Kuolleissa lehdissä ei jää epäselväksi, että se tapahtuu sota-ajan Euroopassa. Vladimir Putinin Feldzug Ukrainaan on radiouutisten pääaihe. Sodan raakuus välittyy hälyttävänä pelkän äänen välityksellä, ilmiö, jota kutsuisin Claude Lanzmann -paradoksiksi. Miksi Shoah on väkevin holokaustielokuva? Koska julmuuksia ei nähdä, niistä vain kuullaan.

Kaurismäen aloittaessa elokuvantekijänä elettiin glasnostin ja vuosina 1989–1991 vapautumisen aikaa. Aki Kaurismäen ainoa eepos on Total Balalaika Show, dokumentti kylmän sotan päättymisen juhlasta Senaatintorilla. Mauri Sumén kertoi minulle, että elokuvaa esitettiin laajasti Venäjällä Puna-armeijan kuoron lentokatastrofin jälkeen vuonna 2016. Mieleen tulee myös Pidä huivista kiinni, Tatjana, jossa Tatjana (Kati Outinen) kiteytti ironisesti ja silti tosissaan: ”Varmasti tuttavuus kansojemme välillä on lujittunut näinä päivinä”. Mutta nyt eletään aikaa, joka on kylmää sotaa pahempi, pahinta sitten toisen maailmansodan.

Aki Kaurismäen ja hänen luottokuvaajansa Timo Salmisen kuvallinen runous ilmenee neljällä tavalla. Sisäkuvissa värimaailma on rohkean maalauksellista ja koloristista kuin Pedro Almodóvarilla. Ulkokuvissa, mahtavan laajoissa kaukokuvissa Kuolleet lehdet kasvaa upeaksi Helsinki-elokuvaksi. Näyt ovat tuttuja (päärautatieasema) ja silti omaperäisiä. Helsinki kasvaa ja muuttuu silmiemme edessä suurilla rakennustyömailla Hakaniemen sillan ja Ympyrätalon tienoilla. Nostokurjet työmailla ja telakoilla ovat toistuva kuva-aihe. Sielukkaissa lähikuvissa Kaurismäki on edelleen mestari Griffithin, Dreyerin ja Bressonin perinteessä. ”Älä näyttele – ajattele” (Griffith). Kasvojen kartta on päätähtien lisäksi kauttaaltaan mieleenpainuva. Kuvailmaisu on nasevaa myös erityisissä kuva-aiheissa kuten lasagneen sulanut muovi (Ansa) ja särkynyt peili (Holappa).

Kerronta on näennäisyksinkertaista. Meidät kutsutaan melodraaman, sadun, nostalgian, moritaatin ja kiiltokuvan taikapiiriin. Melodraaman volyymia kohotetaan juonenkäänteiden rajuudella ja musiikin ylilyönneillä, ja sitä sordinoidaan näyttelijätyön minimalismilla ja dialogin pelkistyksellä, joka on kuin lukuharjoitusta. Kaurismäen teokset ovat kuin mykkäelokuvia, joissa on puhutut välitekstit. Ylettömyyden ja pelkistyksen samanaikaisuus poistaa tutun ja turvallisen tunteen. Naivismi leikataan vieraannutuksella, absurdismilla ja eksistentialismilla. Olemme liukuvalla asteikolla, kaltevalla pohjalla, psykologisen ja yhteiskunnallisen realismin tuolla puolen. Ylevä kohtaa naurettavan. 

Ilmaisukeinoilla Kaurismäki laskee leikkiä. Teemat hän ottaa vakavasti: rakkaus ja kuolema, oleminen ja katoavaisuus.

Elokuvasta Toivon tuolla puolen elokuvaviitteiden mosaiikki puuttui. Kuolleissa lehdissä sitä on jälleen roppakaupalla. Viitteiden vyyhti ei ole vain filmihullujen tietovisabongailua vaan itsessään nykymaailman todellisuutta / virtuaalitodellisuutta, seikka, jonka oivalsi ensimmäisenä Jean-Luc Godard (1930–2022). Esimerkki: pariskunnan ensimmäinen deittielokuva on Jim Jarmuschin zombietarina The Dead Don't Die, jota voi verrata Taksikuskin ja Frank Drebinin (The Naked Gun) katastrofaalisiin ensitreffivalintoihin.

”Lempeä tragikomedia” on Kuolleiden lehtien virallinen genreluonnehdinta. Siinä puhutaan suurista, vakavista asioista, mutta ”jos kerrot ihmisille totuuden, saa heidät nauramaan, muuten he tappavat sinut”, kuten George Bernard Shaw sanoi (ainakin sanonta on merkitty hänen nimiinsä). Suurin esikuva on Charles Chaplin, joka teki komediaa ihmissyönnistä (Kultakuume), työttömyydestä (Kaupungin valot) ja Hitleristä (Diktaattori). Kaurismäen maailmankuva on chaplinmainen, mutta lakoninen, ilmeetön deadpan-näyttelijätyyli muistuttaa Buster Keatonia. Jussi Vatasen olemuksessa on myös yhtymäkohtia Stan Laureliin, ”koomikoiden koomikkoon”.

Kaurismäki-komiikan perusteisiin kuuluu anakronismi, jonka hän on jalostanut taiteen lajiksi. Yhteismitattomuuksiin kuuluvat lankapuhelin, internet-kahvila, transistoriradio, Nokian vintagepuhelin ja käteinen raha. Kalenterissa lukee vuosiluku 2024, mutta internetiä ei melkein ole, ei lainkaan mobiilinäyttöjä, ja treffit ovat Tinderin antiteesi. Holappa lukee Teräsmies-sarjakuvalehtiä (lakkasi ilmestymästä 1992) ja ehkä viittauksena Napapiirin sankareihin Marko Tapion Arktista hysteriaa (1968). Anakronismi on koominen aikakone. 

Aikahyppyjä tarjoaa myös musiikkimaailma, joka perustuu jälleen jukebox / levyraatiaatteeseen, ja uutuutena karaokeen. ”Suomalaiset eivät näytä tunteitaan – he laulavat karaokea” on tunnuslause Einari Paakkisen elokuvassa Karaokeparatiisi (2022), josta Kaurismäki on nostanut elokuvaansa karaoken supermummon Evi Salmelinin. Tämä on kiertänyt koko Suomen vanhalla Skodallaan vanhainkodeista baareihin, kuten elokuvan tiedote kiteyttää.

Tshaikovskin kuudes sinfonia (Pateettinen) soi jälleen, kuten Tulitikkutehtaan tytössä ja muutamassa muussakin Kaurismäen elokuvassa. Paljaimmin koskettavat musiikkiraidat kuullaan elokuvan jälkipuolella, jolloin leikinlasku vaimenee, draama kohoaa ja kuvamaailma jykevöityy. Holapan saatua potkut kuullaan ”Aamuöiseen sateeseen”, Gordon Lightfootin (1938–2023) klassikon tulkitsijana Rauli Badding Somerjoki, maailman parhaiden veroinen. Surrealistinen aikakone-jukebox tarjoilee myös ”Arpiset haavat” Badding-tulkintana.

Elokuvan syvimpään ytimeen johdattaa Maustetytöt, Spice Girls -antiteesi. En tunne nykymusiikkikenttää (oma häpeä), mutta Lost Boys -elokuvan lopputeksteissä kuulemani ”Tein kai lottorivini väärin” iski voimakkaasti, ja olin häkeltynyt Maustetyttöjen ja Agentsin ”Salatusta surusta”, joka palautti mieleen Brahenkentän luisteluradalla vuonna 1966 soitetun Dannyn ja The Renegadesin version: Maustetyttöjen tulkinta on ylivertainen. Kuolleissa lehdissä Maustetytöt esittää baarikeikalla”Syntynyt suruun, puettu pettymyksiin”. He ovat kalman enkeleitä, haamuja tulevaisuudesta. Me tiesimme kaiken emmekä tehneet mitään, vaan elimme kuin viimeistä päivää ja tuhosimme tulevaisuuden. Itkin koko ajan.

Kuolleet lehdet kertoo surusta, pettymyksestä ja kuolemasta mutta myös rakkaudesta, ystävyydestä ja solidaarisuudesta. Tunnuslaulussa rakkaus on kuollut mutta muistoissa ikuinen. Elokuvan tarinamaailmassa merkitys on muuttunut ja kiteyttää syrjäytymisteemaa.

Loppukuvan Nykyaika-kunnianosoituksessa Ansa ja Holappa taluttavat Chaplin-koiraansa kohti auringonlaskua Olavi Virran laulaessa tunnussävelen. Kuvauspaikka on Meripuisto, suuntana Eira, Calamari Unionin myyttinen määränpää. Jos katsoja haluaa jatkaa kävelyä siitä, mihin elokuva päättyy, hän näkee oikealla Engelinaukiolta katselevan kirjailijapatsaan, Juhani Ahon, jonka Juhan Kaurismäki on filmannut. Vasemmalla palaa hukkuneiden merimiesten muistoksi ikuinen tuli.

...
HÖSTLÖV SOM FALLER
Les Feuilles mortes

Jacques Prévert's lyrics translated into Swedish by the poet Lars Huldén (1926-2016).

Höstlöv som faller och förenas

Med minnen för jag glömmer ej

Höstlöv som faller och förenas

Med längtan och din sång för mej

Du sjöng en sång, en sång om livet

Och kärleken vi hade då

Det var den gång jag tog för givet

Det skulle alltid bli vi två

Men tiden skiljer sakta banden

Sakta och tyst på vägen bort

Och stegen plånas ut i sanden

Stegen där Kärleken har gått

Det var en sång, en sång om livet

Och kärleken vi hade då

Det var den gång jag tog för givet

Det skulle alltid bli vi två

Men livet skiljer sakta banden

Sakta och tyst på vägen bort

Och stegen plånas ut i sanden

Stegen där du och jag har gått

Höstlöven faller och förenas

Med minnen för jag glömmer ej

Höstlöven faller och förenas

Med längtan efter dej

Med min längtan efter dej

PRESS KIT

Aki Kaurismäen lempeä tragikomedia KUOLLEET LEHDET kertoo kahden yksinäisen, sattumalta Helsingin yössä toisensa kohtaavan ihmisen (Alma Pöysti ja Jussi Vatanen) yrityksestä löytää elämänsä ensimmäinen, ainoa ja viimeinen rakkaus.  

 

Kuolleet lehdet on Kaurismäen näyttävä paluu parrasvaloihin. Cannesin elokuvajuhlien tuomariston palkinnolla palkittu elokuva saapuu elokuvateattereihin kautta maan 15.9.2023. 

 

Tekniset tiedot 

Suomi–Saksa 2023, 81 min, 1:1.85, colour, Dolby Digital 5.1, 4K DCP 

Kansainvälinen nimi: Fallen Leaves 

Ruotsinkielinen nimi: Höstlöv som faller 

Puhutut kielet: suomi 

Tekstitys saatavilla: suomi, ruotsi, englanti, suomi heikkokuuloisille 

Kuvailutulkkaus: on 

Ikäraja: 7 (väkivalta) 

 

Työryhmä 

Käsikirjoitus ja ohjaus  Aki Kaurismäki 

Kuvaus  Timo Salminen 

Lavastus  Ville Grönroos 

Puvustus  Tiina Kaukanen 

Leikkaus  Samu Heikkilä 

Äänisuunnittelu  Pietu Korhonen 

Tuotanto  Aki Kaurismäki / Sputnik, Misha Jaari & Mark Lwoff / Bufo, Reinhard Brundig / Pandora Film 

Rahoittajat  Suomen elokuvasäätiö, Filmförderungsanstalt,  Film- und Medienstiftung NRW 

Yhteistyössä  Yle, ZDF Arte 

Kansainvälinen myynti  The Match Factory 

Levitys Suomessa  B-Plan Distribution  

 

Synopsis 

Kuolleet lehdet kertoo kahden yksinäisen, sattumalta Helsingin yössä toisensa kohtaavan ihmisen (Alma Pöysti ja Jussi Vatanen) yrityksestä löytää elämänsä ensimmäinen, ainoa ja viimeinen rakkaus. Heidän tietään kohti tätä kunnioitettavaa päämäärää varjostavat miehen alkoholismi, kadonneet puhelinnumerot, tietämättömyys toistensa nimistä tai osoitteista ja elämän yleinen taipumus asettaa esteitä onneaan etsivien tielle. Tämä lempeä tragikomedia on jo kadonneeksi luultu neljäs osa Aki Kaurismäen työläistrilogiaan (Varjoja paratiisissa, Ariel ja Tulitikkutehtaan tyttö). 

 

Kuolleet lehdet palkittiin toukokuussa Cannesin elokuvajuhlilla Prix du Jurylla eli tuomariston palkinnolla.  

 

Palkinnot  

Cannesin elokuvajuhlat 2023, pääkilpasarja: Prix du Jury (tuomariston palkinto) 

Cannesin elokuvajuhlat, 2023, Palm Dog Awards: Grand Jury Prize (tuomariston palkinto Alma-koiralle)

Münchenin elokuvajuhlat 2023, pääkilpasarja: Bayern 2 & SZ Audience Award (yleisöpalkinto) 

 

Otteita kansainvälisistä arvioista 

“Klassista Aki Kaurismäkeä parhaimmillaan. Hohtaa kuin jalokivi”  –David Rooney,  The Hollywood Reporter 

”Elokuva, jolla on suuri sydän” –Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian 

”Kauniisti näytelty elokuva. Hohkaa lämpöä”  –Jonathan Romney, Screen Daily 

”Todellinen helmi” –Pete Hammond, Deadline 

”Pelkistettyä ja älykästä” –Marta Balaga, Cineuropa 

”Kaurismäki on pokerikasvoisen melankolian kuningas” –David Calhoun, Time Out  

”Pöysti ja Vatanen ovat unelmakaksikko” –Martyn Conterio, The London Economic 

 “Jälleen kerran upea tragikoominen farssi suomalaismaestro Aki Kaurismäeltä” –David Jenkins,  Little White Lies

 

Elokuvassa esiintyvät 

Alma Pöysti esittää elokuvassa Ansa-nimistä itsepintaista kauppa-apulaista. Pöysti (s. 1981) on tehnyt kattavan uran niin teatterin kuin elokuvan parissa sekä Suomessa että Ruotsissa. Pöysti sai Jussi-palkinnon vuonna 2021 siihenastisen uransa merkittävimmästä roolityöstä Tove Janssonina (Tove, ohj. Zaida Bergroth), ja helmikuussa 2023 hänet palkittiin Göteborgin elokuvajuhlien parhaan naispääosan palkinnolla roolistaan Selma Vilhusen elokuvassa Neljä pientä aikuista. Pöysti tullaan pian näkemään myös Fares Faresin ohjaaman A Day and a Half -elokuvan pääosassa sekä Pirjo Honkasalon uudessa elokuvassa Orenda. 

 

Jussi Vatanen näyttelee elokuvassa viinaan menevää hiekkapuhaltajaa nimeltä Holappa. Vatanen (s. 1978) on yksi Suomen tunnetuimmista ja pidetyimmistä näyttelijöistä. Hän tuli suurelle yleisölle tutuksi Napapiirin sankarit -elokuvista ja on sittemmin tehnyt merkittäviä roolitöitä mm. Tuntematon sotilas- ja Metsäjätti-elokuvissa (jälkimmäisestä Jussi-ehdokkuus), Cannesin pääkilpasarjassa kilpailleessa Huone 301 -sarjassa sekä Mies joka kuoli -sarjassa. Vatanen muistetaan myös valtaisaan suosioon yltäneen Kimmo-sarjan pääosasta. 

 

Merkittävissä sivuosissa nähdään Kaurismäen aiemmistakin elokuvista tutut Janne Hyytiäinen Huotarin roolissa sekä Nuppu Koivu Liisan roolissa. 

 

Elokuvassa esiintyvät myös muun muassa Matti Onnismaa, Martti Suosalo, Sakari Kuosmanen ja Alina Tomnikov. Sekä tietysti Alma-koira, joka palkittiin Cannesin elokuvajuhlilla Palm Dog -gaalan tuomariston palkinnolla. 

 

Musiikilla on tunnetusti ollut suuri rooli Kaurismäen elokuvissa. Kuolleet lehdet on saanut inspiraationsa Joseph Kosman säveltämästä ja Jacques Prévertin sanoittamasta Les feuilles mortes -kappaleesta (suomeksi Kuolleet lehdet). Elokuvassa nähdään musiikkiesitys Maustetytöt-yhtyeeltä. 

 

Ohjaajan sana 

”Vaikka olenkin tähän asti luonut kyseenalaisen maineeni tekemällä lähinnä tarpeettomia väkivaltaelokuvia, päädyin lopulta, kaikkien turhien ja rikollisten sotien ahdistamana, kirjoittamaan tarinan niistä aiheista, joiden kautta ihmiskunnalla saattaisi olla tulevaisuus: rakkauden kaipuu, solidaarisuus, toivo ja kunnioitus toista ihmistä, luontoa ja mitä tahansa elävää tai kuollutta kohtaan. Sillä varauksella, että kohde ansaitsee sen. 

Nostan elokuvassa ohimennen liian pientä hattuani kotijumalilleni Bressonille, Ozulle ja Chaplinille, mutta olen silti yksin vastuussa tästä katastrofaalisesta epäonnistumisesta.” 

 

Aki Kaurismäki 

 

Ohjaaja Aki Kaurismäki 

Käsikirjoittaja, ohjaaja, leikkaaja ja tuottaja 

Syntynyt 4.4.1957  

Filmografia ohjaajana: 

1981  Saimaa-ilmiö (ohj. yhdessä Mika Kaurismäen kanssa) 

1983  Rikos ja rangaistus 

1985 Calamari Union 

1986 Varjoja paratiisissa 

          Rocky VI (lyhytelokuva) 

1987 Hamlet liikemaailmassa 

          Thru the Wire (lyhytelokuva) 

1988 Ariel 

1989 Leningrad Cowboys Go America 

          Likaiset kädet (Yleisradiolle) 

1990 Tulitikkutehtaan tyttö 

          I Hired a Contract Killer 

1992  Boheemielämää 

          Those Were the Days (lyhytelokuva) 

          These Boots (lyhytelokuva)         

1994  Pidä huivista kiinni, Tatjana 

          Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses 

          Total Balalaika Show 

1996  Kauas pilvet karkaavat 

1999  Juha 

2002  Mies vailla menneisyyttä 

          Dogs Have No Hell (lyhytelokuva) 

2006 Laitakaupungin valot 

2007 Valimo (lyhytelokuva) 

2011 Le Havre 

2012 Juice Leskinen & Grand Slam: Bluesia Pieksämäen asemalla (lyhytelokuva) 

          Tasqueiro (lyhytelokuva) 

2017  Toivon tuolla puolen 

2023 Kuolleet lehdet 

 

Tuotantoyhtiöt 

Kuolleet lehdet -elokuvan on tuottanut Kaurismäen oma Sputnik-yhtiö yhdessä tuotantoyhtiö Bufon kanssa. Elokuvan yhteistuottajana on toiminut Pandora Film Saksasta.  

 

Sputnikin ja Bufon yhteistyö on jatkunut tiiviinä Kaurismäen Toivon tuolla puolen -elokuvasta lähtien. Vuonna 2007 perustettua tuotantoyhtiö Bufoa vetävät tuottajat Mark Lwoff ja Misha Jaari. Bufon nimekkäimpiin tuotantoihin lukeutuvat muun muassa Khadar Ayderus Ahmedin lukuisia kansainvälisiä palkintoja pokannut ja Cannesin elokuvajuhlilla ensi-iltansa saanut Guled & Nasra sekä Pirjo Honkasalon Betoniyö. Tällä hetkellä Bufo työstää Pirjo Honkasalon uutta elokuvaa Orenda, jonka pääosissa nähdään Alma Pöysti ja Pirkko Saisio.  

 

Pandora Film on Sputnikin pitkäaikainen ja läheinen yhteistyökumppani, joka on ollut mukana Kaurismäen elokuvissa sekä yhteistuottajana että Saksan levittäjänä jo kolmen vuosikymmenen ajan. Kaurismäen lisäksi Pandora on luonut pitkäikäisiä yhteistyösuhteita useiden merkittävien arthouse-ohjaajien kuten Jim Jarmuschin kanssa. 

Kuolleet lehdet

Joseph Kosma

Jacques Prévert

Kullervo

Olavi Virta

Kuin ikävyys

Mi kauniin muiston

Voi synnyttää

Vaik' suru jää

Hetken lehdet nuo

Vielä hehkuu

On loisto tuo

Jo viimeinen

Ovat muistojemme

lehdet kuolleet

Ne mennessään

vie tuulonen

Ovat muistojemme

lehdet kuolleet

Ne mennessään

vie tuulonen

Toivoisin sinunkin muistelevan

Päiviä kesämme kaunehimman

Aurinko hymyili suloisemmin

Rinnallas armahin kun astelin

Kauan tuo kesämme

kestänyt ei

Halla sen kukkaset vei

Kesästä jäljelle jäi muisto vain

Hetken lehdet nuo

Vielä hehkuu

On loisto tuo

Jo viimeinen

Ovat muistojemme

lehdet kuolleet

Ne mennessään

vie tuulonen

Ovat muistojemme

lehdet kuolleet

Ne mennessään

vie tuulonen

Polttava kaipuu

nyt on rinnassain

Ken muistoja

mielessään kantaa

Paljon hän voi omistaa

Ei niitä voi toiselle antaa

Ne syömmeen kätkeä saa

Hetken lehdet nuo

Vielä hehkuu

On loisto tuo

Jo viimeinen

Ovat muistojemme

lehdet kuolleet

Ne mennessään

vie tuulonen