Fallen Leaves (Kuolleet lehdet) directed by Aki Kaurismäki has won the FIPRESCI Grand Prix as the best film of 2023 – films released after July 1 , 2022. The FIPRESCI Grand Prix will be presented at the opening gala of San Sebastian Festival where Fallen Leaves will also screen in the Perlak section.

Fallen Leaves (Kuolleet lehdet) premiered at Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Jury Prize. This is the second time that Kaurismäki will have received this recognition from the international critics, which went in 2017 for his film The Other Side of Hope (Toivo tuolla puolen).

The other two finalists were The Banshees of Inisherin, by Martin McDonagh, and Tár, by Todd Field, both premiered at the 2022 Venice Festival, where they respectively won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor going to Colin Farrell and the Volpi Cup for Best Actress going to Cate Blanchett.

Since its creation in 1999, the FIPRESCI Grand Prix, awarded by the members of the International Federation of Film Critics, FIPRESCI, has gone to big-name directors including Maren Ade, Pedro Almodóvar, Paul Thomas Anderson, Alfonso Cuarón, Jean-Luc Godard, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Michael Haneke, Richard Linklater, George Miller and Chloé Zhao.

Fallen Leaves (Kuolleet Lehdet)
Aki Kaurismäki (Finland)
Country(ies) of production: Finland – Germany
Cast: Alma Poysti, Jussi Vatanen
The tale of two lonely people who run into one another by chance one night in Helsinki and try to find the first, only and ultimate love of their lives. Their road towards this honorable goal will be overshadowed by the man’s drinking, lost phone numbers and life’s general tendency to throw curveballs on the path of those looking for happiness.