6:30 PM–9:00 PM    Maison Française East Gallery, Buell Hall

Film/Panel Discussion:

Le Havre by Aki Kaurismäki

Filming at the Borders Film Series

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Aki Kaurismäki, 2011, 93 min. 

The film screening will be preceded by an introduction by Professor Annette Insdorf .

Genre: Fiction, Drama. Finnish-German-French co-production. Filmed in France. Language: French, with English subtitles.

In this warmhearted portrait of the French harbor city that gives the film its name, fate throws young African refugee Idrissa (Blondin Miguel) into the path of Marcel Marx (André Wilms), a well-spoken bohemian who works as a shoe-shiner. With innate optimism and the unwavering support of his community, Marcel stands up to officials doggedly pursuing the boy for deportation. A political fairy tale that exists somewhere between the reality of contemporary France and the classic cinema of Jean-Pierre Melville and Marcel Carné, Le Havre is a charming, deadpan delight.

Le Havre premiered in the Official Selection at the Festival de Cannes, where it received the Fipresci Prize and was also presented in Official Selection at Locarno, Toronto and New York festivals. Le Havre was then theatrically released in 43 countries. Internationally acclaimed Finnish director Kaurismäki - who chose to shoot Le Havre directly in French - was, by 2004, one of the first European filmmakers to dedicate a feature to the subject of the refugees: “European cinema has not much addressed the continuously worsening financial, political, and above all, moral crisis that has led to the ever-unsolved question of refugees; refugees trying to find their way into the EU from abroad, and their irregular, often substandard treatment. I have no answer to this problem but I still wanted to deal with the matter in this film.” (Aki Kaurismäki)