Arctic Spleen is a personal intimate journey inside the Greenlandic juvenile world where nature, violence, boredom and a strong cultural legacy have been claiming for decades the highest and saddest "toll". That of hundreds of young lives.

In east Greenland twenty percent of youths aged between 15 and 25 try to end their lives every year. Two percent of them succeed.

It's the highest juvenile suicide rate in the world.

A mirror on the fears of a huge part of young Greenlanders inclined to commit suicide.
A delicate exploration of the subtle and intimate war many young people fight against violence, boredom and emptiness, a struggle that has always been the “raison d’etre” of young generations, the difference being that in east Greenland many of them lose that battle.

Suicide here is experienced differently from the rest of the world. It's not perceived as the ultimate desperate act of a single person but considered an exit strategy deeply ingrained in the local culture. It was the ancient manner of solving problems, distortedly handed down over generations.

"This work immediately transformed into an intimate experience, a story of friends.

I wanted to follow my instincts, letting myself be guided by the deep empathy established with these people. In an instinctive, intimate, respectful and not bulky manner.

Everything was done by me alone, without any crew, experiencing the everyday using a small videocamera as an extension of my feelings to record what I observed, heard and felt."

Piergiorgio Casotti