Marta Balaga Finland’s Mikko Myllylahti returns to Cannes’ Critics Week with his feature debut as a director “The Woodcutter Story.” His short “Tiger” premiered in the same section in 2018, while “The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki,” which he co-wrote with Juho Kuosmanen, won Un Certain Regard back in 2016.“It’s a very strange film,” he tells Variety about his dark fairytale about the ever-optimistic Pepe, whose world – confined to a small, snowbound town – is slowly crumbling around him. Admitting that after “Olli Mäki,” based on a true story of a boxer preparing for his big break in the 1960s, he needed to “get away from reality.” “I was fascinated by old tales and in Finland, they can be quite cruel,” he says.