Two search for a place to call home. Criterion Collection Year 2018 Video Release 2018-05-15 Studio Criterion Collection Genre Foreign MPAA Rating Not Rated Color Color Runtime 100 Animated Live-Action Full Synopsis This wry, melancholic comedy from Aki Kaurismaki, 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 Wikstrom Sakari Kuosmanen leaves his wife and his job and buys a conspicuously unprofitable restaurant. Khaled is denied asylum but decides not to return to Aleppo and the paths of the two men cross fortuitously. As deadpan as the best of the director's work, and with a deep well of empathy for its down-but-not-out characters many of them played by members of Kaurismaki's loyal stock company , THE OTHER SIDE OF HOPE is a bittersweet celebration of pockets of human kindness in an unwelcoming world. Director Aki Kaurismaki Cast Aki Kaurismaki; Sherwan Haji; Sakari Kuosmanen