The Other Side of Hope

The Other Side of Hope is a 2017 Finnish comedy-drama film written, produced, and directed by Aki Kaurismäki. The film was produced by Kaurismäki's Finnish company Sputnik. In December 2016, it was selected to play in competition at the 67th Berlin International Film Festival. The story is about a Finnish businessman who meets a Syrian asylum-seeker looking for his missing sister. At the time of its release, Kaurismäki had noted that this film would be his last as a director, although he went on to make a new film (Dead Leaves) a few years later. Plot In Helsinki, Waldemar, a traveling shirt salesman, quarrels with his wife and leaves her. He decides to leave his business and sells his remaining shirts. He gambles his earnings at a poker game and wins a lot of money. With this, he buys a restaurant. His three employees are initially skeptical of Waldemar's attempts to reinvigorate their restaurant. At the same time, Khaled, a Syrian, shows up in Helsinki illegally on a cargo ship. He turns himself in to the police and applies for asylum. At the refugee processing facility he's sent to, he befriends Mazdak, an Iraqi refugee. Khaled asks Mazdak to help him with his search for his sister, Miriam, who was lost during their journey through the Balkans for refuge from the Syrian Civil War. When the government denies Khaled's asylum application, he escapes. Waldemar finds Khaled hiding near his restaurant, gives him refuge, and hires him. Waldemar and his staff help Khaled get new papers. Mazdak eventually hears from Miriam. Waldemar and Khaled hire a trucker to smuggle her from Lithuania, where she was in a refugee facility. Khaled and Miriam reunite. Shortly thereafter, Khaled, while returning to Waldemar's apartment, is harassed by a racist thug who stabs him nearly to death. Waldemar sees pools of blood when he gets home, and goes out to find Khaled sitting under a tree on the bank of a river, smiling as a small dog licks his face.