Olli Mäki Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen, who won the Cannes Grand Prize for Compartment No. 6 in 2021, will be guest of honor at the fifth Talent Village of France’s Les Arcs Film Festival, running December 10-17 in the French Alps.

Marta Balaga Picture Tree International has boarded international sales and debuted the trailer for Miia Tervo’s upcoming comedy “The Missile,” set to world premiere at Göteborg’s just-announced Nordic Competition. Produced by Finland’s Kaisla Viitala at Elokuvayhtio Komeetta and Estonia’s Daniel Kuitunen at Stellar Film, the movie will be distributed in Scandinavia by Aurora Studios. Tervo’s second feature after the award-winning “Aurora” – which opened the Swedish fest back in 2019 – teases a “uniquely crafted mix of political satire, heartfelt comedy and kitchen-sink drama, rooted in Northern brevity and melancholy,” according to its description.

Marta Balaga Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen, behind “Compartment No. 6” and “The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki”– both awarded in Cannes – will now turn his attention to new series “Yours, Margot,.”  The upcoming series is one of the 10 projects chosen for Series Mania and Beta Group’s Seriesmakers. Based on Meri Valkama’s novel, “Compartment” will be produced, just like his previous films, by Helsinki-based Aamu Film Company, with “Compartment” scribes Andri Feldmanis and Livia Ulman also on board. This time Kuosmanen dissects the experiences of Vilja, who spent her childhood in East Berlin, following her foreign correspondent father. After his death, she finds old letters to “Erich,” all from mysterious “Margot.” Now, as an adult, she decides to return to Berlin and track her down. 

Aamu Film Company will invest in Jenni Jauri’s new production company Silmu Films, Variety has found out exclusively. Aamu, founded in 2001 and co-owned by Jussi Rantamäki and Emilia Haukka, has become a local arthouse powerhouse thanks to its festival-friendly slate, especially Juho Kuosmanen’s “The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki” and Golden Globe-nominated “Compartment No. 6,” awarded the Grand Prix in Cannes. “We had a good film with decent sales and we started to think about what we should do next,” Rantamäki said. “Aamu’s brand is simple and clear: we only work with a select few directors. We don’t want to change that; we don’t want to turn into a factory where you don’t know what is happening and with whom. So first we decided not to grow, and then realized we could invest in a new company instead.”

There is a sort of checklist for Finnish films — and I say this with love — that includes snowy exteriors, bleakly austere interiors, ice fishing and someone getting murdered with an axe. The Woodcutter Story ticks every box, plus a few more. Characters who barely speak, for example — and who may, indeed, have nothing to say. When they do, there is a jolting humor that may not be humor at all: their deadpan delivery gives nothing away. This is the Finnish way.

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.

Manori Ravindran International EditorA crowdpleaser that quickly became a word-of-mouth hit in Cannes, Juho Kuosmanen’s “Compartment No. 6” follows Finnish academic Laura (Seidi Haarla) who strikes up an unlikely friendship with Russian miner Ljoha (Yuriy Borisov) on a train from Moscow to Murmansk, a city in northwestern Russia. The Finnish film, which has drawn parallels to the Before Sunrise trilogy, was quickly snapped up out of Cannes for major territories, including North America, by Sony Pictures Classics.

Marta Balaga Following his 2016 Un Certain Regard win with “The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki,” Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen is back in Cannes with “Compartment No. 6,” and this time, in the main competition.

Jan Naszewski’s Warsaw-based sales company has boarded Finnish-Iranian Hamy Ramezan’s debut feature “Any Day Now,” to be shown as a work in progress at Göteborg’s Nordic Film Market, WHICH RUNS Jan 30.-Feb 2.