Olli Mäki

The story of the boxing match that Olli Mäki is preparing takes place in a society where media coverage of sport was just beginning and still had, as we see in the film, a certain awkwardness, a kind of innocence. Today, the role of sponsors in sport has become commonplace, but in the 60s it was unheard of. Olli Mäki's manager made his career in the United States and is trying to import the methods he saw there to Finland. In the film you can sense a struggle between the show, which comes from the manager and the United States, and the European idea of a daily life where happiness is almost poetic in its simplicity. The film is a bit of a fable, a competition between two visions of what a hero should be: a man who takes his life into his own hands, who becomes a sort of manager of his own destiny – that is the American vision - and the man that Olli Mäki is, open to life and to feelings. (Extract from an interview with Juho Kuosmanen by Frédéric Strauss in Télérama)