MELANCHOLIAN 3 HUONETTA (The Three Rooms of Melancholia)
by Pirjo Honkasalo, Documentary, 106', 2004, 35mm
FINLAND/SWEDEN/GERMANY

Divided into three episodes, the documentary reveals how the Chechen War has affected children in both Russia and in Chechnya. The principal characters are successively Russian children, where they are being trained as child soldiers, a woman that rescues children from the devastated ruins of Groznyy, capital of the Chechen Republic, and finally children in a refugee camp close to the Chechen border. The Three Rooms of Melancholia is a film on war without war, but where children are on the point of becoming Russian soldiers, trapped by an iron discipline or left on their own and terrified by the omnipresence of violence. Through the force of her images the director makes us feel, the true tragedy of behind these personal situations.

PIRJO HONKASALO
Pirjo Honkasalo was born in 1947 in Helsinki (Finland). Graduated from Finland’s Film School in 1969, studied in Prague’s Film Academy and in Philadelphia’s Temple University. Masters in both fiction and documentary and has done everything from directing to shooting, as well as scriptwriting and editing. In 1969, she becomes the first Finnish camerawoman with Pilvilinna (Château du nuage) by Sakari Rimminen. She continues and becomes Rauni Molmberg’s assistant for the Earth of our Ancestors (1973). She directs several documentaries including Pekka Lehto, before starting to shoot alone her Trilogy of The Sacred and the Evil.