Aki Kaurismäki’s Cannes competition title Fallen Leaves will be seen first in Finland at the Midnight Sun Film Festival. In the festival’s Big Tent, the audience gets to enjoy a film concert by Fallen Leaves-starring band Maustetytöt, creating a fresh soundtrack for Kaurismäki’s The Match Factory Girl.
”Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves is, by the filmmaker’s own mathematics-bending admission, the fourth installment in his Proletariat Trilogy,” says the Midnight Sun Film Festival’s Artistic Director Timo Malmi. “In film history, even the Godfather trilogy may pale in comparison, when a supermarket shelf-stocker (Alma Pöysti) and a sandblaster (Jussi Vatanen) fall in love – as “the falling leaves drift by the window / the autumn leaves of red and gold,” as go the lyrics to the evergreen song that inspired the film,” Malmi continues.
Fallen Leaves is Kaurismäki’s first film in six years and takes part in Cannes Film Festival’s Main Competition this month. It receives its Finnish premiere under Sodankylä’s midnight sun in June and arrives in wider theatrical distribution in Finland in autumn 2023.
The band Maustetytöt, whose music can be heard in Fallen Leaves, will make an appereance in Sodankylä. The band will perform in a special film concert held in the Big Tent, in which their music gives a fresh soundtrack to one of Kaurismäki’s most beloved films, The Match Factory Girl (1990). It is the third and previously final installment of the director’s Proletariat Trilogy.
The Midnight Sun Film Festival will be held for the 38th time in June 14-18, 2023. The festival’s entire programme and filmmaker guests will be announced in May. The schedule will be published on Monday, June 29, and ticket sales will start on Wednesday, May 31.
We would like to thank our partners:
Trade Union Pro, EU/Creative Media, Finland Festivals, Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation, Laitilan Wirvoitusjuomatehdas, the National Audiovisual Institute (KAVI), the Ministry of Education and Culture (OKM), the Finnish Film Foundation (SES), the Sodankylä Municipality, YLE Teema.