No Oscar for Kaurismäki film

Man without a Past, by Finnish film director Aki Kaurismäki, failed to win the Oscar for the title of Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards in Hollywood on Sunday night. The film was the first Finnish movie to be nominated for the prestigious prize. The honour went to the German film Nowhere in Africa, which has its Finnish premiere in two weeks' time. Kaurismäki and the film's leading lady Kati Outinen did not attend the ceremony. In spite of pleas from Finland's Minister of Culture Kaarina Dromberg that they attend, they stayed away to protest US plans to attack Iraq. The Academy Awards ceremony was not the first event that Kaurismäki boycotted: in October he stayed away from the New York Film Festival after Iranian director Abbas Kiarostam was refused a US visa to travel to the event. In the film Outinen plays a Salvation Army volunteer who helps a man who has forgotten his identity and lost all memory of the past.