The French-language film by Finnish classic Aki Kaurismäki tells the story of an illegal migrant, a black teenager who made his way from Gabon to his mother in London, but got stuck in Le Havre. Hiding from the police, the boy finds shelter in the home of an elderly shoeshine man and soon becomes the favorite of all his neighbors, and even melts the heart of the police commissioner. In the Norman entourage the stoic philosophy and nordic fatalism of Aki Kaurismaki begins to play with new jovial colors, in the daily life of the characters appears calvados and references to French culture: the hero’s wife is named Arletty in honor of the star of the famous Marcel Carné's film "Les enfants du paradis".