Paangshu (Earth)
Visakesa Chandrasekaram
Sri Lanka.  85 min.  2018

Paangshu revolves around Babanorna (Nita Fernando), a launderer belonged to one of the lowest castes in Sri Lanka. Babanorna is summoned to an identification parade where she identifies Lionel as one of the paramilitary men who abducted her son during the 1988/89 insurgency. While Indika (Jagath Manuwarna), the young public prosecutor shows little or no interest in helping Babanorna finding her missing son, Namalee (Nadie kammallaweera), the pregnant wife of the paramilitary man seeks forgiveness from the launderer. As the prolonging hearings in the dilapidated courthouse continues for months, shameful secrets are gradually unearthed by the defeated rebels, victorious soldiers and those who were crushed in between.

VISAKESA CHANDRASEKARAM

Visakesa Chandrasekaram’s debut film Sayapethi Kusuma (Frangipani) was officially selected to more than 25 international film festivals winning several awards including the Best Foreign Film at 2015 Rio LGBT Film Festival and Dr Lester James Peris Award at 2016 Sarasaviya Film Festival. His second film Paangshu (Earth) was premiered at 2018 Montreal World Film Festival. Visakesa has worked in Sri Lanka as a human rights lawyer and in Australia as a consultant for the NSW Government. He has received a doctorate from the Australian National University for his research on the use of confessionary evidence under counter-terrorism laws. He currently works as a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Law in University of Colombo.

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Visakesa  Chandrasekaram :    visakesa@hotmail.com

Side A Side B
Rahat Kazmi
India.  115 min. 2018

A comedy about Kashmir? Probably not. Well, not at all. The latest film by director and co-writer Rahat Kazmi is a delightful, charming and poignant drama about growing up in a conflict zone. Between the bombs and the bullets, a group of college friends are trying to get the most out of their lives but they need their downtime… like anyone in that situation. Focusing on an intrepid group of four friends (following the style of “Inbetweeners”), are bond by the love of cinema, they get together to buy VHS Bollywood movies but when the prohibition of TV and movies appears (as happened in 1994), the four friends are not to be defeated. What happens then is fun, totally believable and very entertaining. It ends perhaps on a more tense posture. But as Kazmi said at Mantostaan’s presentation at last year’s festival, “it’s a beautiful place with intelligent, cultured and educated people. They deserve the best. And this movie is a love letter for the people of Kashmir, and one that will touch a lot of people”.

RAHAT  KAZMI

Rahat Kazmi is an internationally acclaimed director known for his hard hiting films like Mantostaan and Identity Card. Rahat has won many international awards for his film including Best Director at London Asian Film Festival 2017 for Mantostaan, Best Director and Best film at San Francisco Global Movie Festival 2014 and also Rahat’s feature Identity Card’s scenes were shown at Europian Parliament as a reference for debate on Kashmir conflict.

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Rahat Kazmi :   rahatkazmifilms@gmail.com