Other Side of Hope, The (DVD)

This wry, melancholic comedy from Aki Kaurismki, a response to the ongoing global refugee crisis, follows two people searching for a place to call home. Khaled (Sherwan Haji), a displaced Syrian, lands in Helsinki as a stowaway; meanwhile, middle-aged Finnish salesman Wikstrm (Sakari Kuosmanen) leaves his wife and his job and buys a conspicuously unprofitable restaurant. Khaled is denied asylum but decides not to return to Aleppoand the paths of the two men cross fortuitously. As deadpan as the best of the directors work, and with a deep well of empathy for its down-but-not-out characters (many of them played by members of Kaurismkis loyal stock company), "The Other Side of Hope" is a bittersweet celebration of pockets of human kindness in an unwelcoming world.