Susanna Salonen – director and writer

Susanna Salonen was born in 1966 in Lahti, Finland, and grew up in Lübeck. At the start of her career she worked as a lighting and camera technician for Mika Kaurismäki (Cha Cha Cha (1989) and The Last Border (1993)), Tom Tykwer (Run, Lola, Run (1998)) and Jan de Bont. Since 1998, she has directed several documentaries, including A Tokyo Fusebox (1999), in which she relates her experiences as a foreign hostess in a club in Tokyo's Roppongi entertainment district. The film premiered in the Berlinale Forum. Other documentaries followed, including Monsoonregen (2000), Red and Blues (2005) and Der Anfang war gut (2006). During a lengthy stay in Thailand working as a diving instructor, she gained inspiration for her feature film debut Patong Girl, for which she also wrote the screenplay.