Filmmaker and actor Herath Mudiyanselage Lanka Chamari Bandaranayake

The Hail

The project is a fiction drama screenplay. It is in the development stage with its first draft. The story is inspired by true events that took place in Sri Lanka with the Easter Sunday bomb blasts in 2019. Three Sinhalese women in their 30s and their families, unknown to each other, are crossed with one another’s lives by suicide bomb blasts done by Muslim extremists but the tracking down of their lives reveals an entirely different story about them and their connection to the bomb blasts. The three stories of the three women and the lives of their families are constructed in the story in a backward narrative structure. It is set between 2019 to 2009 in Sri Lanka. The narration mainly reveals how the lives of three women who have never seen each other are intertwined throughout their ten years of life, unfolding how a decision made by one person has a decisive impact on the lives of the other two. The subtext centres around how identity politics play a role in social issues and how people are victimized in that brutal process. In this scenario, the film discusses how women are subjugated within this political crisis, portraying how gender relations are controlled and directed by this vortex of political power. The story will create a cinematic influence to generate a dialogue about reconciliation, conflict resolution and peacebuilding, which will be more effective in the means of perspective changes in society. It will connect with personal stories, emotions and real lives that represent the issues, and tell untold stories that help to shape the structure and intensity of the debate around the ethnic issue which led to violence against women. I hope to develop the final draft of the screenplay during the residency.