Les Feuilles Mortes
Aki Kaurismäki's 2026 film about two working-class people who meet by chance and can't quite figure out how to connect — even though they want to.
The Setup: Two People, One Karaoke Bar, Almost Nothing Happens
Les Feuilles Mortes follows Ansa (Alma Pöysti), a supermarket cashier who gets fired for pocketing a piece of food past its sell-by date, and Holappa (Jussi Vatanen), a construction worker whose drinking is quietly erasing his future. They meet at a karaoke bar — not by design, just circumstance. Exchange almost nothing. And yet something sticks.
The real tension isn't dramatic in any traditional sense. It's the gap between two people who want connection and can't quite cross it. Kaurismäki doesn't make it easy for you. There's a scene where Holappa stands outside a cinema waiting for Ansa, and the camera just holds on him. No swelling score. No intercutting to check her watch. You sit with his uncertainty the way he does. That's the whole film in miniature.
Why This Film Hits Harder Than It Looks
What's striking is how much emotional labour Kaurismäki refuses to do for you. The deadpan register he's spent decades refining doesn't mean the film is cold — it means the warmth, when it arrives, lands harder precisely because it wasn't telegraphed.
Pöysti is extraordinary here. She plays Ansa as someone who's learned not to expect much, and watching her slowly, cautiously allow herself to hope is the film's quiet engine. Vatanen matches her beat for beat. Two actors who don't quite know how to be in a relationship but are willing to try anyway. Janne Hyytiäinen appears in a supporting role, and his understated presence grounds the film's small social world without any fuss.
There's also a political current running underneath that doesn't announce itself. Job loss. Precarious employment. The cost of addiction. These aren't backdrop details — they're the conditions that make connection so difficult for people like Ansa and Holappa. Kaurismäki doesn't editorialize. He just shows you the world they inhabit and trusts you to draw your own lines. Hard to say if that restraint feels more radical now than it would have twenty years ago, but it does.
How It Got Made and Why It Won
The production is, like most Kaurismäki projects, stripped to its bones. Shot in Finland with a small crew and an aesthetic owing more to 1950s melodrama than contemporary European art cinema, the film clocks in at 81 minutes — not a second wasted.
Festival recognition arrived fast. At the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, the film won the Jury Prize, one of the competition's most prestigious honours. According to Screen Daily's Cannes review, the film's deadpan style and emotional precision made it one of the competition's standout titles. The Jury Prize confirmed what most critics already sensed: this was the real thing.
MUBI handled U.S. distribution, and the film went on to earn approximately $954,300 at the American box office — a remarkable figure for a subtitled, 81-minute Finnish film about unemployment and alcoholism. That's the kind of number that tells you word spread organically, person to person. No algorithm bump needed.
Rotten Tomatoes' critic consensus calls it "a life-affirming gem" — which, honestly, is one of those blurbs that actually fits. AlloCiné's press average sits at 4.1 out of 5 based on 28 reviews, a strong showing in a market that doesn't always warm to Kaurismäki's particular frequency. Movie OTT tracks these critical scores and platform availabilities across regions, so if you're trying to figure out where the film sits internationally, that's your starting point.
Where You Can Actually Watch It
For U.S. viewers, MUBI is the natural home — the platform's curatorial approach suits Kaurismäki's sensibility. Fandango at Home also lists the film for digital rental or purchase, which means you don't need a subscription to an art-house service.
Movie OTT's where-to-watch widget gives you a live breakdown of every platform carrying Les Feuilles Mortes across regions. Availability shifts regularly — the film might move between services or become available in a new territory without warning. Worth checking before you plan a viewing.
The streaming widget at the top of this page updates in real time, so you'll see current options without having to check each service individually.
Who Should Watch This
If you've responded to Kaurismäki before — or to filmmakers like Jim Jarmusch or early Wim Wenders — this is essential viewing. If you're new to his work, this is actually the best place to start.
It's not for viewers who need momentum or spectacle. Quiet. Precise. Genuinely moving. It's for anyone who's ever waited for something good to happen and wasn't sure it would. Clear 81 minutes you won't regret spending.
The bottom line: This is a 0/10 rated film — which means it didn't qualify for scoring on the review scale used here. That said, the festival reception and critical consensus tell you this isn't a miss. Check Movie OTT for current streaming options in your region, or head straight to MUBI if you've got a subscription.
