Film

Le Havre

Aki Kaurismäki sets a fable in a grey French port city: a weathered shoeshiner hides a boy who has escaped a container of refugees, while neighbours quietly conspire to help and the police close in. Deadpan, warm, and gorgeously unhurried — nobody raises their voice, nothing hurries, and yet it argues with total sincerity that ordinary people can simply choose decency. For anyone who likes their kindness dry and their hope stubborn.

TMDb rating7.0

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Fallen Leaves2023

Kaurismäki's own later film, a deadpan Helsinki romance between two lonely workers, proves this tone and tenderness are his signature everywhere, not just borrowed for one French port.

But It's the same recipe from the same cook — if his stillness and dry jokes didn't land here, they won't land there either.

Fallen Leaves poster

Paddington 22017

An outsider taken in by a skeptical community and treated with more decency than the world usually offers, played with the same dry-sweet warmth, just louder and funnier.

But It's a children's film with big set pieces and bigger laughs — none of Kaurismäki's stillness or quiet.

Paddington 2 poster

Welcome2009no page yet

A swimming instructor in Calais risks everything to help a Kurdish teenager cross to England — the same generous-stranger premise, but played for aching realism instead of comedy.

But It trades whimsy for weight entirely; if you wanted the lightness back, this will just leave you gutted.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Miracle in Milan1951no page yet

Kaurismäki has cited this film as an influence — both use fairy-tale logic, a wish granted against the odds, to make suffering bearable without lying about it.

De Sica's neorealist fable about a shantytown of the poor granted a literal miracle — magic realism used to soften hard poverty decades before Kaurismäki borrowed the trick.

But Black-and-white postwar Italian cinema, slower and stranger, with an ending that flies off into outright fantasy.

More like this (8)

The Terminal2004no page yet

Spielberg's gentlest film — a man stranded stateless in an airport finds an unlikely community there, the same bureaucratic absurdity dressed in warmer Hollywood gloss.

But It's sentimental where Kaurismäki is dry, and ties itself in a neat bow his films never would.

Local Hero1983

A wry Scottish comedy about outsiders and small communities colliding, full of the same gentle, straight-faced humour and refusal to hurry anywhere.

But It's about oil executives and Highland villagers, not refugees — lower stakes, gentler politics.

Local Hero poster

Amélie2001

Another fairy-tale version of a French city, all soft light and eccentric neighbours doing small kindnesses for one another.

But It's whimsical to the point of syrupy, with none of the political undertow that gives Le Havre its bite.

Amélie poster

The Straight Story1999

David Lynch's least Lynchian film, plain-faced and patient, about decency and a very slow journey — its stillness sits oddly close to Kaurismäki's.

But American heartland, not French waterfront, and even more uneventful — you have to genuinely like unhurried cinema.

The Straight Story poster

Big Night1996

Immigrant brothers running a failing restaurant, a community rallying around one make-or-break night — the same tenderness toward people scraping by.

But It leans into big emotion and bigger meals — less deadpan, more heart-on-sleeve.

Big Night poster

In This World2003no page yet

A documentary-style drama following two refugees smuggled from Pakistan to London — the unvarnished journey Le Havre's fable politely skips past.

But Shot on the fly with real hardship, it's bleak and urgent where Kaurismäki stays calm and hopeful.

Fire at Sea2016

Strip away the deadpan comedy and fairy-tale ending and this is the same situation, filmed as it actually happens to actual people.

A documentary set on Lampedusa, cutting between an island boy's ordinary life and the real migrant boats arriving — the same port-town collision of local life and crisis, unfabled.

But No jokes, no rescue, no warmth to hide behind — it's patient, quiet, and genuinely upsetting.

Fire at Sea poster

Ernest & Celestine2012

Same fable structure as Le Havre — an unlikely friendship across an enforced divide, told with warmth instead of despair — just aimed at eight-year-olds instead of festival audiences.

A hand-painted animated film about a bear and a mouse, from opposite sides of a segregated society, becoming friends against every rule telling them not to — gentle, funny, quietly political.

But It's a children's cartoon, and if you need your fables to look like real life, watercolour animals may feel like the wrong genre entirely.

Ernest & Celestine poster

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