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Birthday:
02-22-1947
(78 years)
Birthplace:
Helsinki, Finland
Biography
Pirjo Honkasalo is a highly established director, cinematographer and scriptwriter. She directed several feature films in the 1970s and 80s together with Pekka Lehto, including Flame Top which was in Cannes Competition in 1980. In the 1990s, she continued alone and turned to feature documentaries, directing the prize winning trilogy Mysterion, Tanjuska and the 7 Devils, and Atman. Since then, she has directed the stunningly beautiful The 3 Rooms of Melancholia (2004), and her return to fiction was Concrete Night in 2012.
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Their works
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Portraits of Women
Act like Film Crew Member (uncredited)
event1970 star_border 5.1
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Finnish porn movie producer Pertsa returns from America to his home country to continue his profession with hopelessly small budgets and incompetent casts and crews. A self-ironic satire about director Donner's scandalous fame in late 1960s Finland, notorious for a graphic long shot of his penis pointing northeast.
Two Forces
Act like Self
event1979 star_border 5.7
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Docudrama about the Soviet occupation of a Finnish village in the fall before the Winter War.
Uuno Turhapuro
Act like Nainen raitiovaunussa (uncredited)
event1973 star_border 5.4
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Uuno goes with his wife to spend summer holiday to their villa in country, studies playing of the violin in a correspondence course and constructs an own violin with do-it-yourself-method, but quits his career when he perceives that takes his free time too much and comes back to live the life "in the shadow of a fridge". In the start scene of film a priest (Ere Kokkonen as voice) says in the Uuno's weddings that his complete name is Uuno Eero Turhapuro, whereas it's in the all later Uuno-films Uuno Daavid Goljat Turhapuro.
The Dinosaur
Act like Self
event2021 star_border 6.6
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Acclaimed Finnish director Rauni Mollberg made several scandalous yet widely appreciated films. Former co-worker Veikko Aaltonen’s eye-opening documentary The Dinosaur looks at the relentless, often disturbing directing techniques behind Mollberg’s art and success.
Reel Herstory: The Real Story of Reel Women
Act like Self
event2014 star_border 6.5
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Using rare footage and exclusive interviews with filmmakers from all over the globe, "Reel Herstory" corrects the historic notion that women behind the scenes in motion pictures held peripheral careers compared with their male counterparts.
The Earth Is a Sinful Song
Screenplay
event1973 star_border 6.8
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An earthy, naturalistically erotic and blood-soaked tale of young Martta's ill-fated affair with Oula, a womanizing reindeer herdsman in the Finnish Lapland of the late 1940s. When the 19-year-old girl turns up pregnant, her alcoholic father is outraged and a series of tragic events follows
The 3 Rooms of Melancholia
Director
event2004 star_border 7.4
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A searing examination of the unrelenting Chechen conflict, observed through the prisms of a Russian military boys academy, a war-torn town and a children's refugee camp.
Concrete Night
Director
event2013 star_border 5.9
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A 14-year-old boy in a stifling Helsinki slum takes some unwise life lessons from his soon-to-be-incarcerated older brother.
ITO – A Diary of an Urban Priest
Director
event2010 star_border 6
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A biographical documentary following the life of a young Japanese priest and bar-owner.
Hangover
Director of Photography
event1973 star_border 3.5
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Lasse is a car salesman who has vowed to never get married. He wakes up hung over one morning with a wedding ring on his finger and a nude woman in his bed.
Flame Top
Director
event1980 star_border 5.5
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This biographical film celebrates the little-known life of the Finnish novelist and revolutionary Maiju Lassila (Asko Sarkola), born in 1868. Lassila's early years are briefly shown, then the film richly details his active and paradoxically reclusive adult life, beginning with his sojourn in St. Petersburg, working as a businessman. Unable to stay away from politics, he caused the assassination of a high-ranking Czarist and as a result, had to run back to Finland to hide. Once established in the comparative safety of a small village, he taught school in order to support his real vocation as a writer. Always living on the edge of poverty, if not square in the middle of it, Lassila continues to avoid public contact - he keeps his identity low-key and camoflages it by publishing under a variety of pseudonyms.
Fire-Eater
Director
event1998 star_border 5.4
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The twin sisters Helena and Irene are born in Helsinki during World War II. A few months later their mother, Sirkka, leaves the girls in the care of their grandmother, an old communist, and runs away with a German soldier. Their life under the protection of their grandmother and the teachings of communism ends first with the death of Stalin, then with that of their grandmother. The girls are eight years old when they are put in an orphanage. Their mother shows up at the orphanage in the company of Ramon, a Spanish trapeze artist. They are on a talent search for a German circus. Ramon trains the reluctant Irene during circus tours in Central Europe. She becomes the trapeze star of the circus. The hard work soon exhausts Irene and she falls from height, as if on purpose. Helena has secretly learned the art of fire-eating. Now she is burdened with both her mother and her sister. The violent life, however, separates the three from each other. In the present-day Helsinki the middle-aged...
The Sign of Danger
Director
event1978 star_border 6
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Guerrilla style documentary about Finnish Neo-Nazi and occult wacko Pekka Siitoin.
Helsinki, Forever
Thanks
event2008 star_border 6.9
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Helsinki, Forever is a montage film about the city of Helsinki by the award-winning Finnish film director and academic Peter von Bagh. The film draws a portrait of Helsinki and also acts as an essay on Finnish culture in a wider sense. It shows Helsinki as captured by leading Finnish feature film and documentary makers over a period of one hundred years.
Tanjuska and the 7 Devils
Director
event1993 star_border 4
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A documentary about Tanjuska who is a 12-year-old White-Russian schoolgirl, with a face like an icon. Two years ago she stopped eating, then talking and finally she stopped growing. The village priest in Estonia has explained to the family that seven devils have made a home inside Tanjuska. These devils are giving her orders and only a daily ceremony can force the devils to leave the girl.
Da Capo
Director
event1985 star_border 2
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Interwoven with scenes that are meant to grab attention by their stunning composition, this biographical look at Finland's violinist Arto Arsi is not so much a narration of his childhood and early years, as an attempt to artistically show what was happening inside his psyche during that time. Literally sold to a master teacher, Sergei Rippas (Tarmo Manni) by his mother when he was still a child, the violin prodigy was forcefully and strictly raised to practice, practice, and perfect his technique. Once an adult, Arsi finds a way to escape the rigors of a U.S. tour and drowns his overworked self in drink, or seeks out one-night stands, or otherwise lets off steam. The tightly-wound spring that has been coiled since he was forced into his grueling training and work sessions -- shown through symbolic images -- eventually snaps in a healthy way, freeing Arsi at last to continue on, simply for the love of music.
Before I die
Director
event1967
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"Once upon a time I walked in thought. And I felt the pain of burning. When all alone."
The Cinderella of Tallinn
Director
event1996
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Documentary about Estonia's most rich woman.
Mysterion
Director
event1991 star_border 6
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A documentary about a convent of Russian Orthodox nuns in Estonia who have dedicated their lives to serving God.
The Interrogation
Director of Photography
event2009 star_border 6.2
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Finnish Kerttu Nuorteva is spying for the Russians in Helsinki during World War II. She is arrested and interrogated in the hope that she will uncover the Soviet Union espionage tactics.
Orenda
Director
new_releases Release: April 17, 2025
Orenda means an invisible force, a life spirit that inhabits everything living and lifeless: people, wind, birds, rabbits, stone. The one who serves Orenda and sings to it may receive its power. Exploring the themes of guilt and grace, the destinies of two women intertwine into a tense emotional thriller set on a remote island.
Atman
Director
event1997 star_border 5
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The final film in The Trilogy of the Sacred and the Satanic, Atman is a spectacular epic across India, all documented on stunning 35mm. When his mother dies, a devout Hindu man named Jamana Lal begins a 3,000-mile journey in her honor. The destination is the holy city of Haridwar, but to get there, Lal, a 35-year-old whose legs have been paralyzed since childhood, must travel up the Ganges River. He is joined by his brother and his wife as well as by director Pirjo Honkasalo and her small, intrepid crew. Midway through, a miracle occurs, as Lal crosses paths with a kindhearted woman named Shanta. Atman blossoms into a love story for the ages.
Pilvilinna
Director of Photography
event1970 star_border 3.7
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Teenager Erik returns from Paris to Finland in a rowboat and is accosted by a gang of youths in the countryside. He walks to Helsinki, returns to his parents' home and his old high school filled with angry radical teens who, typically for the era, consider the teacher-imposed discipline as another form of capitalist imperialism. Almost reluctantly Erik drifts together with Annika, a girl from a wealthy family, and starts experimenting with sex and marijuana. In the same nonchalant manner Erik gets involved in demonstrations and school politics which escalate into a violent school strike leading to police intervention and heavy sanctions.
Ingmar Bergman on Life and Work
Director of Photography
event1998 star_border 7.2
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TV Documentary about Ingmar Bergman from 1998.
Nine Ways to Approach Helsinki
Director
event1982 star_border 7
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Nine Ways to Approach Helsinki, shot by Pirjo Honkasalo and Eero Salmenhaara, is a documentary on the capital of Finland.
Donner - Private
Writer
event2021 star_border 6.5
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Jörn Donner’s entire production can be considered as a self-portrait, a life-spanning performance. Whilst others have painted one image or another of Donner, John Webster’s interpretation differs in that it pulls most of its material from Donner’s last-intended interview in December 2019, and an immense never-before-seen collection of photographs from albums simply labelled “Donner – Privat”. As a result, the film morphs into an epilogue of sorts, of Donner’s life story.
Christmas in the Distance
Thanks
event1994 star_border 6
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The director documents the events leading to a reunion with her estranged father.
Ikäluokka
Director
event1976
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Onni is a shoemaker, aged 70. Toivo is a blacksmith, aged 75. The film tells the story of their generation, from childhood through various stages to the present day. They have lived through the entire Finnish history of this century.
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