The Man Without a Past

2003 • 96 minutes

About this movie

Markku Peltola (Juha) plays ‘M’, who arrives in Helsinki only to be viciously set upon by thugs and pronounced dead by medics. By some miracle he revives but with no memory of his past or his identity. Rebuilding his life from scratch, ‘M’ acquires a melancholy dog (a recurring Kaurismaki motif) named Hannibal and falls in love with a Salvation Army soup kitchen volunteer (the muse-like Kati Outinen, Drifting Clouds). But the past inevitably catches up with him, forcing him to confront his future.