The 3 Rooms of Melancholia

The 3 Rooms of Melancholia (Finnish: Melancholian 3 huonetta) is a 2004 Finnish documentary film written, directed and co-produced by Pirjo Honkasalo. The film documents the devastation and ruin brought on by the Second Chechen War, more specifically the toll that the war had taken on the children of Chechnya and Russia. The film received positive reviews from critics and won numerous awards. Content summary The content of The 3 Rooms of Melancholia is divided into three chapters, each chronicling different hardships of the affected children. The film is narrated by Pirkko Saisio but narration and dialogue are sparse and the imagery is left to convey the largest part of the film's message. Chapter one: Longing Kronstadt is a Russian town on Kotlin Island near Saint Petersburg. A site of the infamous Kronstadt rebellion, this is where the Armed forces of the Russian Federation run and maintain the Kronstadt Cadet Academy, a boys' military academy. The film documents a part of the months-long intense training program of several hundred children between the ages of nine and fourteen, most of whom are either orphaned or from very poor families. The viewers learn that many of these children are orphans because of the war in Chechnya and that some of the children will be sent to fight this very same war once their training is complete. Some of the children and their backgrounds are presented in-depth and a bleak picture emerges about their past and their possible future lives. The viewer is also led to believe that the future Russian Army will be largely composed of children such as these. The training is intense and devoid of any enjoyment for the children; the war exercises are strenuous and endless; the children don't get to play much but, even when they do, their games are also organized into war exercises; most of the television programming that the children watch is limited to news reports about wars and terrorist attacks. Bleak and somber imagery dominates throughout the first chapter, instilling images of poverty, despair and desolation affecting the children as well as their families.