The Man Without a Past

A man arrives in Helsinki by train and is attacked at the station, beaten so badly that he is taken to hospital and pronounced dead. He survives, but wakes with no memory of who he is or where he came from. Without a name, money, or a home, he settles in a makeshift community of people living on the margins of the city, gradually rebuilding a life from nothing while a romance develops with Irma, a volunteer in the Salvation Army.

Aki Kaurismäki wrote and produced this Finnish-German-French comedy-drama, which followed Drifting Clouds and preceded Lights in the Dusk in his filmography. Markku Peltola plays the unnamed man, with Kati Outinen as Irma and supporting turns from Juhani Niemelä, Kaija Pakarinen, Sakari Kuosmanen and Annikki Tähti among a credited cast of 67.

The film was released in 2002 and runs 97 minutes. It holds a critics' rating of 8 out of 10 from 100 reviews, while audiences on TMDB rate it 7.4 out of 10 from 460 votes. The gap between the two suggests the film was received more enthusiastically by reviewers than by the general audience.