Albanian

Koli, student in Tirana, hides in the countryside to escape a blood feud, but soon realizes he has to go back to his school, to his life in the city, at the risk of confronting his assassin and involuntarily, he becomes a reluctant mirror of his country’s love-hate relationship with tradition.

Brazilian Samba, Bosnian Sevdah, New Orleans Jazz, Cuban son – and Albanian Saze! The turn of the last century saw mass migrations to the world’s cities with rural people bringing their music with them, adapting their traditions to new circumstances and modern instruments. Of all these great musical forms, the mesmerizing arabesques, joyful dances and heart-breaking laments of Saze are among the least recorded, and they remain largely unknown outside Albania.

Freely adapted from Henri Murger's 1851 novel, this is Kaurismäki's highly individual take on the story of three bohemian artists –a poet, a painter and a composer– set in a timeless Paris. shifting between heartbreaking drama and black humour.