The Man Without a Past
TITLE
The Man Without a Past
DIRECTOR
Aki Kaurismäki
COUNTRY
Finland, Germany, France
YEAR
2002
DURATION
97′
GENRE
Comedy, Drama, Romance
The Man Without a Past
M arrives in Helsinki only to be viciously attacked by thugs and pronounced dead by medics. He revives but with no memory of his past or his identity. He rebuilds his life from scratch, but the past inevitably catches up with him.
DIRECTOR BIOGRAPHY - Aki Kaurismäki
Aki Kaurismäki did a wide variety of jobs including postman, dish-washer and film critic, before forming a production and distribution company, Villealfa (in homage to Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville (1965)) with his older brother Mika Kaurismäki, also a film-maker. Both Aki and Mika are prolific film-makers, and together have been responsible for one-fifth of the total output of the Finnish film industry since the early 1980s, though Aki's work has found more favour abroad. His films are very short (he says a film should never run longer than 90 minutes, and many of his films are nearer 70), eccentric parodies of various genres (road movies, film noir, rock musicals), populated by lugubrious hard-drinking Finns and set to eclectic soundtracks, typically based around '50s rock'n'roll. In the 1990s he has made films in Britain (I Hired a Contract Killer (1990)) and France (The Bohemian Life (1992)).
- Director Aki Kaurismäki
- Screenplay Aki Kaurismäki
- Cinematography Timo Salminen
- Editing Timo Linnasalo
- Cast Markku Peltola, Kati Outinen, Juhani Niemelä, Kaija Pakarinen
- Producer/s Aki Kaurismäki
- Production Company Sputnik, Pandora Filmproduktion
- Distributor/s The Match Factory
- Project Title The Man Without a Past
- Project Type Comedy, Drama, Romance
- Completion Date March 1, 2002
- Country of origin Finland, Germany, France
- Country of filming Finland
- Language Finnish
- First-time Filmmaker No
- Student Project No
Aki Kaurismäki
Aki Kaurismäki did a wide variety of jobs including postman, dish-washer and film critic, before forming a production and distribution company, Villealfa (in homage to Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville (1965)) with his older brother Mika Kaurismäki, also a film-maker. Both Aki and Mika are prolific film-makers, and together have been responsible for one-fifth of the total output of the Finnish film industry since the early 1980s, though Aki's work has found more favour abroad. His films are very short (he says a film should never run longer than 90 minutes, and many of his films are nearer 70), eccentric parodies of various genres (road movies, film noir, rock musicals), populated by lugubrious hard-drinking Finns and set to eclectic soundtracks, typically based around '50s rock'n'roll. In the 1990s he has made films in Britain (I Hired a Contract Killer (1990)) and France (The Bohemian Life (1992)).
Academy Awards
Nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, 2003
Cannes Film Festival
Best Actress, Grand Prize of the Jury, Palm Dog, Prize of the Ecumenical Jury, 2002
European Film Awards
Nominee for Best European Director, 2002
Tirana International Film Festival
Special Screening, 2022
