The Other Side of Hope. Malla Hukkanen © Sputnik OyHow to make a political film that is depoliticized? How to make a virtuous film that is not self-righteous? How to see the other not as the other but as himself?In Aki Kaurismäki’s The Other Side of Hope, the destinies of two men dovetail: Wikström, a middle-aged Finnish shirt salesman, and Khaled, a Syrian refugee from Aleppo who came to Finland as an accidental stowaway. It is in many ways an “issue film” (for which Kaurismäki apologizes in the film's press notes), yet one which successfully maneuvers the many pitfalls of “issue films” by first avoiding self-righteousness, and second, by being in fact about two men, individuals, which grants the film compassion without falling into sentimentality. The danger of sentimentalizing the narrative of immigration in Europe is that it only further compartmentalizes the other as such. To sentimentalize the...