THE CHRONICLES OF MELANIE Available on DVD & Digital Nov. 17

She survived to tell us so we would not forget...

An agonizing account of the greatest tragedy ever to befall Latvia, THE CHRONICLES OF MELANIE, based on the memoirs of Melānija Vanaga, "Suddenly a Criminal: 16 Years in Siberia," is a terrifying account of the mass deportation of residents of Soviet-occupied Latvia that occurred as Stalin tightened his grip on power.

On the morning of June 15th, 1941, over 17,000 people from Latvia found themselves torn from their family homes and forcibly relocated under suspicion of "collaborating with the enemy." This mass deportation saw husbands and wives separated and made to toil in Siberia for starvation rations. Separated at gunpoint from her husband Aleksandrs, the prominent editor of a Latvian newspaper and a natural target of the Soviet purge, Melanie (Sabine Timoteo) and her son, Andres, faced a three-week ordeal aboard a cattle car to a remote and foreign Tiukhtet village during which a diet of scraps of bread, dirty water and no bathrooms were just the beginnings of a long and brutal exile that tested even those of the strongest constitution.

This powerful but grueling film from Director Viestur Kairish, the Latvian Submission for Best International Film at the 90th Academy Awards, reveals the true magnitude of the human spirit and the will to survive in the face of unimaginable tragedy.

Watch the trailer here: