After premiering at Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Un Certain Regard Prize, Juho Kuosmanen‘s debut feature The Happiest Day In the Life of Olli Mäki went on to become Finland’s Oscar entry, and now it’ll get a U.S. release this spring courtesy of MUBI. Following a Finnish boxer whose newfound romance gets in the way of his training for a major fight, a U.S. trailer has now arrived and it looks to stunningly-photographed drama, all in black-and-white.
We said in our review, “The Happiest Day In the Life of Olli Mäki is a boxing biopic that has no interest in the sport of boxing. Winner of the Un Certain Regard prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Juho Kuosmanen’s dryly funny, blissfully sweet, and deceptively absorbing work revels in Olli Mäki’s psychological surroundings as he contends with the strangeness of national promotion, the accruing pressures of competing, and a burgeoning romance that’s feeling more permanent than he expected.”
Check out the trailer below for the film starring Jarkko Lahti, Oona Airola, and Eero Milonoff.
In his confident and widely-celebrated debut feature, with stunning cinematography captured entirely in 16mm black and white film, Juho Kuosmanen presents the true story of Olli Mäki, the famous Finnish boxer who fought American featherweight world champion Davey Moore for the 1962 title. The small town life of the immensely talented and equally modest Olli is transformed when he is swept into national stardom and suddenly regarded as a symbol of his country. There’s only one problem: Olli is falling in love. Inside the ring, it’s Finland vs. the U.S.A., but outside, boxing and romance become unlikely adversaries vying for Olli’s attention.
The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki opens on April 21 in New York at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas and in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Royal, followed by a release on MUBI.