Munnel (Visakesa Chandrasekaram) Sri Lanka. Official Section |

Munnel (Sand)
Visakesa Chandrasekaram
Sri Lanka. 2023. 102 min

Rudran, an ex-Tamil militant returns home from military detention, looking for his lover Vaani who had disappeared during the war. Rudran’s mother, Sellamma who is gifted with a ‘boon’ of soothsaying, tells the locals whether their kith and kin are alive or dead, but she refuses to say the same about Vaani. While men and women defeated in the war find solace in massive Hindu temples, Rudran initially refuses to pray, but later in an act of desperation, he joins a month-long pilgrimage seeking help from God Ayyappa, hoping to unite with his lover.

VISAKESA CHANDRASEKARAM

Visakesa Chandrasekaram is a lawyer, academic and an artist. He has made two feature films – Sayapethi Kusuma (Frangipani) and Paangshu (Earth) which won many local and international awards. He has published two novels – Tigers Don’t Confess and The King and the Assassin. He has written and directed several stage plays including Forbidden Area, which won the Gratiean Prize. Visakesa has worked in Sri Lanka as a human rights lawyer and in Australia as a consultant to 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.

FILMOGRAPHY

2023 Munnel/Sand
2018 Paangshu/Earth
2013 Sayapethi kusuma/Frangipani (Best Foreign Film Director at the 2015 Rio LGBT Film Festival)
2009 Finding Kamal (short)

PRESS
Special Jury Award / IFF Rotterdam 2023: “a great simple story about a young man caught between revolution and authoritarianism.”

With a cast and crew of local Tamil-speakers from the area, all direct witnesses to the civil war, Munnel is a deeply authentic reflection on the post-war consciousness of Sri Lanka’s ethnic minority. Filmmaker Visakesa Chandrasekaram explores this perspective with masterful subtlety and a meticulous, languid pacing. Rudran’s journey is composed of moments of stillness, tenderness and contemplation, encompassing the costs of civil war and the weight of its failures on the Tamil identity in the quiet melancholy of Sivakumar Lingerswaran’s revelatory, layered performance. There are no flashbacks, and yet the past is achingly present in his physicality, his gazes and gestures that debut cinematographer Rishi Selvam frames in wide and tranquil shots, uniting characters and landscape in a wounded harmony.

“What happened over there?” Rudran’s friend asks him. Rudran remains poignantly silent, and the wind blows sorrowfully through the grasses that surround them.