[6] It is Kaurismäki's 20th full-length film and a continuation of his Proletariat series, which was originally planned as a trilogy and already includes Shadows in Paradise (1986), Ariel (1988), and The Match Factory Girl (1990).

It received critical acclaim and was named one of the top five international films of 2023 by the New York-based National Board of Review.

On her second day on the job, her boss is arrested, and she is jobless once again, but runs into Holappa who buys her a coffee and a pastry.

He eventually sustains an injury at work, and is fired after failing a breathalyzer test, which also gets him kicked out of the company dormitory.

Fallen Leaves was produced by Sputnik Oy and Bufo, and co-produced by the German company Pandora Film.

[18] The wall calendar shown in the film shows autumn 2024, but the news narrated on the radio takes place in the early moments of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

[18] It also contains several references to films, including Jim Jarmusch's The Dead Don't Die, David Lean's Brief Encounter, and Charlie Chaplin's Limelight.

[8] According to Alma Pöysti, the female lead, "the film is about lonely people with baggage, who meet later in life.

[20] Fallen Leaves was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival,[21][22] where it had its world premiere on 22 May 2023.

The website's consensus reads, "A quirky tale of star-crossed lovers, Fallen Leaves is a life-affirming gem from Finnish filmmaker Kaurismäki.

"[36] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 86 out of 100, based on 30 critic reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".

"[38] Glenn Kenny of RogerEbert.com gave the film four out of four stars, stating that "just an hour and twenty minutes long, the movie is a soulful romance that goes through conventional narrative paces.

[40] American filmmaker Dean Fleischer Camp praised the film, saying "Kaurismäki tells sincere stories about marginalized peoples struggling for the basic stuff—food, shelter, dignity, love.

But the films themselves are bone-dry comedies which encourage us to laugh at the protagonists' misfortunes, or at least at the absurdity of the world's indifference to them.

When the lights come up, I feel radicalized toward empathy and sincerity, ready to take up arms against the cynicism within myself and against the ironic posturing that is pop culture's favorite self-defensive crouch.

[46] In December 2024, Fallen Leaves was chosen by the Dicastery of Evangelization as one of the official film recommendations for the Jubilee Year 2025.