He is the first Sri Lankan who became this past May the prestigious Camera d’Or award for Best First Film at the world reknowned Cannes Film Festival for his Sinhalese language film Sulanga Enu Pinisa /The Forsaken Land. He previously directed a documentary called The Land of Silence in 2001 and a short film, Empty for Love, in 2002.
He says: « If The Forsaken Land has something to do with my country’s history, it is especially through its conveyance of the suspended state of being simultaneously without war and without peace – in between the two. I wanted to capture this strange atmosphere… For me, filmmaking is an ideal vehicle for expressing the mental stress people experience as a result of the emptiness and indecisiveness they feel in their lives. With the film, I wanted to examine emotional isolation in a world where war, peace and God have become abstract notions. » (Read more on Festival de Cannes).

Vimukthi Jayasundara – Sri Lanka
Born in Ratnapura, southern Sri Lanka, Jayasundara worked in the advertising industry and wrote film reviews before studying at the Film and Television Institute of India from 1998 to 2001. Returning to Sri Lanka, he joined the Government Film Unit and made The Land of Silence, a black-and-white documentary about the victims of Sri Lanka’s civil war. In 2001, he received a grant to continue his film studies in France at Le Fresnoy, where renowned Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-Liang – who served as a guest lecturer to the faculty – left a lasting impression. Working with Tsai, Jayasundara made Empty for Love (2002), a short film that was selected for Cinéfondation, the student category at Cannes. Sulanga Enu Pinisa became a reality with grants from Fonds Sud and Prince Claus.
The beautifully shot film takes place in Sri Lanka in an indefinite setting, where politics, war, love and sex exist in a suspended state of being. Painfully evocative, Sulanga Enu Pinisa attempts to capture the emptiness experienced by the victims of a prolonged civil conflict, using a highly experimental visual style. Zhuang Wubin talks to Vimukthi Jayasundara in New Delhi during the 7th Osian’s-Cinefan Film Festival, the pre-eminent festival in the world for Asian cinema, where Sulanga Enu Pinisa made its Asian premiere.(Read much more on contemporary magazine.com).
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