Aki Kaurismäki | Finland | 2017 | 98’

The movies of Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki with their deadpan drollery have long been a habit-forming pleasure. This sympathetic and charming tale of a Syrian refugee who stows away to Finland mines the dark humour for which Kaurismäki’s famous while refusing to flinch from heartbreak and hardship. It’s a humane comedy, with an air of unworldly absurdity, which doesn’t undermine its seriousness in any way, in fact embraces it with almost miraculous ease and simplicity.