Mika Kaurismäki

An actress, three months post-partum, reads through fragments of the archive of Suzanne Césaire as she prepares to perform excerpts of the writer's work. A post-biopic about Caribbean surrealist Suzanne Césaire, deconstructing the process of bringing an actually-lived life to film. The film examines her relationship with her husband, French politician Aimé Césaire, and famed surrealist André Breton. Filmed on the grounds of a palm tree archive in South Florida, a small group of filmmakers and actors consider the "paradise" of historic and political memory. The film takes place primarily in the space of the film set itself where actors and crew confront the history of this writer in her youth, and then stage scenes from her life. The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire is writer-director Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich's first feature and stars César-award-winning actor Zita Hanrot and Motell Gyn Foster. Inspired by the structures of Césaire's own writing, which often took a colonial convention and unraveled it, the film deconstructs the narrative period biopic genre, moving between a conventional cinema and deconstructed experimental scenes. With a soundtrack by singer Sabine McCalla, The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire plants us firmly in the darkness and desire of its subject matter while acknowledging the impossibility of resuscitating a legacy partially lost to time. —Official site

An episode in the life of Nikander, a garbage man, involving the death of a coworker, a love affair and much more. Only connect. In gray, class-conscious Helsinki, Nikander is a stoic, solitary garbage man. Cigarettes, coffee, bingo games, and English lessons border his circumscribed life. There are few words, no smiles, and no laughter. Violence and the threat of violence seem close at hand. Ilona, a supermarket clerk who frequently loses her job, bandages Nikander's hand one evening; later he gets her out of a jam, and they begin an on-again off-again relationship. "Why do I keep losing?," Nikander asks his co-worker, Melartin, a man Nikander met in jail and helped get a job. Can he break his losing streak? —<jhailey@hotmail.com>

A slaughterhouse worker and former law student, takes vengeance on the man who killed his fiancée in a hit and run accident. An adaptation of Dostoyevsky's novel, set in modern Helsinki. Slaughterhouse worker Rahikainen murders a man, and is forced to live with the consequences of his actions. —Michael Brooke <michael@everyman.demon.co.uk>