Man Without a Past

An unidentified man gets severely beaten by a trio of thugs and ends up in the hospital, where he dies--but suddenly reawakens without knowing who he is. He wanders into a small, poverty-stricken community where families live in small containers and a night out means dinner at the Salvation Army. It is there that M meets Irma, another poor soul looking for a better life--and maybe love. Aki Kaurism?ki's THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST begins with horrible violence, but after that it becomes a longing, beautiful study of love and loneliness, of pain and poverty, of faith and fragility. Markku Peltola stars as the amnesiac known only as M; Kati Outinen plays Irma with great care and tenderness for which she won the Best Actress Award at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. Finnish writer-director-producer Kaurism?ki's film won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes; it is wonderfully satiric, sweet and innocent, and brutally honest, following in the footsteps of such other Kaurism?ki triumphs as JUHA and THE MATCH FACTORY GIRL.