Drifting Clouds (film)
1996 film by Aki Kaurismäki
Drifting Clouds (Finnish: Kauas pilvet karkaavat) is a 1996 Finnish comedy drama film edited, written, produced, and directed by Aki Kaurismäki and starring Kati Outinen, Kari Väänänen and Markku Peltola. The film is the first in Kaurismäki's Finland trilogy, the other two films being The Man Without a Past and Lights in the Dusk.
Plot
Ilona Koponen, a head waitress at Dubrovnik restaurant, is married to Lauri, a tram driver. They live in a small, modestly furnished apartment in Helsinki. As they come home from work late one night, Lauri surprises Ilona with a television which he purchased on hire purchase. They talk about whether they can meet their financial obligations, but agree that the TV payments are manageable.
Next day, as Lauri gets to work, he learns that the company will be laying off workers due to the non-profitability of certain tram routes and he is randomly chosen as one of those. The day after Lauri has finished his last shift, Ilona is informed by the owner of Dubrovnik that the restaurant is being sold to a chain and that all employees will be let go since the new company will be bringing in its own staff.
Both start looking for work but with discouraging results. Lauri is offered a job as a bus driver but is unable to pass the medical exam and subsequently loses his professional driver's licence.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Drifting Clouds (film)” is 1996 film by Aki Kaurismäki. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Drifting, Clouds and film, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “1996 film by Aki Kaurismäki” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2300638. The Library of Congress control number is no2026103469. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1996.
Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Drifting Clouds (film)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.