We will be celebrating the birthday of Kino Sõprus in April by screening films from each decade of our cinema's history. The fourth film in the programme is our beloved Aki Kaurismäki and his "Drifting Clouds" (1996) and the bar will stay open after the film for hangout, good music and fun talk. 

The sublime Drifting Clouds is in many ways the perfect Aki Kaurismäki film. Long-term regulars Kati Outinen and Kari Väänänen star as a couple who are made redundant from their jobs (a head waitress and a tram driver) and spend much of the running time struggling to survive.

Which sounds like the last word in social-realist grimness – and at least one British critic made the mistake of over-hastily jumping to that conclusion – but Kaurismäki is constantly alert to small, absurdist touches, both visual and verbal. In one of the most memorable dialogue exchanges in his entire output, Outinen’s character Ilona tries to get a job in another restaurant, only to be told by its owner that she’s too old. Protesting that she’s only 38, the deadpan response is: “Exactly. You could drop dead any minute.”

But, as so often in Kaurismäki’s films, it all works out for them in the end, and the final shots would make the flintiest heart leap for joy. Indeed, Kaurismäki has consistently delivered some of the most rapturously upbeat endings in all cinema. There’s also a quietly lovely touch in the briefly glimpsed portrait of regular male lead Matti Pellonpää, who would undoubtedly have appeared in this as well had he not died in 1995 at the age of just 44.