How can Gilles Deleuze’s theory of the cinematic image be reinterpreted in such a way that stillness and refusal emerge as a new mode of presence within the cinematic image? In recent decades, theoretical debates on the cinematic image and its relation to time and movement have gained a central place in philosophical and film studies. This study revisits Deleuze’s theory of the cinematic image to demonstrate how visual and narrative elements in film can generate a renewed experience of cinematic presence. While Deleuze primarily analyzes the image within the frameworks of movement and time, this research shows how Aki Kaurismäki, the Finnish filmmaker, in The Man Without a Past, employs formal elements such as stillness, silence, and narrative suspension to construct an ontological Image of Refusal that offers a distinct mode of presence in cinema. The notion of the Image of Refusal challenges Deleuze’s established categories and, by departing from the binary of the movement-image and the time-image, introduces a new theoretical possibility for understanding the aesthetics of stillness in cinema. Through qualitative analysis, interpretive-hermeneutic reading, and textual research within the framework of Deleuzian philosophy and film theory, the article demonstrates how Kaurismäki’s minimalist formal strategies, by reproducing spaces of suspension and refusal, actualize Deleuze’s concept of the thought-image and open a multifaceted experience of meaning and presence within the cinematic image. This reinterpretation not only enriches the understanding of Deleuze’s theory but also proposes ways to apply his concepts to contemporary film analysis, emphasizing the importance of close attention to form and narrative in philosophical and conceptual studies of cinema.