Le Havre

Le Havre (2011) is a warm deadpan comedy-drama by Aki Kaurismäki you can watch online on iFILM. Marcel Marx, a former bohemian writer, has long since settled into the French port town, shining shoes for a living and asking little of life beyond his work, his home and the corner bar.

Then two things upend his quiet routine at once. His wife Arletty falls seriously ill and is taken to hospital. And on the waterfront he stumbles on a young African boy, a refugee the police want to deport. The old man decides to hide the child and smuggle him to his mother in London. Marcel's only allies are his stubborn optimism and the neighbors on his street: the baker, the grocer, the woman who runs the bar. Against him stand a cold bureaucracy and a watchful inspector. André Wilms, Kati Outinen and Jean-Pierre Darroussin head the cast.

The Finnish master fashions something close to a fable about kindness, shot in his trademark style: still frames, sparse dialogue, saturated color, gentle irony in place of melodrama. It premiered in competition at Cannes and took home the FIPRESCI Prize. It will land for anyone who loves quiet European cinema with a beating heart. Stream Le Havre (2011) online on iFILM.