Khaled is from Syria. He stows away on a coal freighter and ends up in Helsinki, where he applies for asylum as a war refugee. When the Finnish authorities decree that he will be deported back to war-torn Aleppo, he decides to stay in the country illegally and goes underground. On his odyssey through the streets of the Finnish capital, he encounters both hostile and helpful Finns – and eventually, the former travelling salesman Wikström, who runs a restaurant he recently bought on the outskirts of the city. He hires Khaled as a dishwasher. But the friendly little community, which includes a waitress, the chef, and a dog, is soon under threat. Aki Kaurismäki has once again, as the distributor put it “expanded the cosmos of his cinematic underdogs with a global component. With people who are on the run and are now at the very bottom of the social hierarchy”.