‘Little Jaffna’ – London Indian Film Festival gets off to a strong start…
📹 Today – Industry panel and New British Asian Shorts (see ticket link below) and our festival coverage continues
Film about Tamil diaspora hit home and has universal appeal…
THERE MAY not have been quite the celebrity razzmatazz of previous years but the opening of the London Indian Film Festival (LIFF) still had much to recommend it.
‘Little Jaffna’, a cross-cultural drama about Tamil gangs in a particular arrondissement of Paris really worked and many were impressed by the fact that it had few professional actors.
Director of Photography Maxence Lemonnier and non professional actor Priya Darshan, a banker based in Paris, opened up about the film in a Q&A post its screening at NFT1. The pair also spoke to www.asianculturevulture.com before the film (video shorts coming). Writer-director and lead actor Lawrence Valin was not in London.
Inspired by Valin, who had made a short along similar lines – they both said, through interpreter Abla Kandalaft, that the Sri Lankan civil war was but a memory for a generation – even Darshan admitted he knew little growing up in Paris to Tamil parents who simply didn’t talk about the conflict.
Despite a generation of Tamils fleeing the war and setting up homes and families in the West – very little is documented in documentary or narrative fiction here about this and their experiences.
Valin is an independent filmmaker and started making shorts around this subject and worked with Jesuthasan Anthonythasan, who plays the lead in iconic French director Jaques Audiards’ Palme d’Or winning ‘Dheepan’ (2015) – which is primarily about a Sri Lankan Tamil couple, who are unknown to each but settle down together in a tough Paris high rise housing estate.
‘Little Jaffna’ has two recognised names in it – actors Radikaa Sarathkumar who plays Valin’s grandmother in the film and Vela Ramamoorthy who essays the lynchpin godfather figure – both add gravitas to the film and give fine performances – as does everyone in this film.
‘Little Jaffna’ had its world premiere in Venice last year and then went to the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).
Among the guests at the Opening were actor Antonio Aakeel and writer-director Sangeeta Datta (See our Reel below).
https://www.instagram.com/p/DMQiuyot2Zl/
Code switching when it really matters…
FROM the mid-1980s through to 2009, the civil war in Sri Lanka was among the most bloody and violent anywhere – and many people forget that it was the Tamil Tigers who turned suicide bombing into a thing…
So, the opening film of the London Indian Film Festival (LIFF), ‘Little Jaffna’ is based around a story that dominated global headlines for almost three decades and little is remarked these days about the refugee community the conflict created.
Many Tamils fled to the West as this film is set in a particular milieu of Paris which is well known to people who live there – the little Jaffna of the film itself.
It’s centred around Lawrence Valin’s character – he both stars and directs.
He is an undercover cop who infiltrates a Tamil gang suspected of human trafficking and drug smuggling and obviously supporting the Tamil Tigers – the militant group that fought the Sri Lankan Army and was designated a terrorist group.
The strength of this film lies in its portrayal of identity and how Valin’s character shifts in different environments.
Both his parents have passed and he lives with his grandmother in a Paris apartment.
He is the good boy at home with her: he eats rice with a fork like a western person. And he speaks better French than Tamil.
When he is with the Tamil gang, who mostly speak in French, they pick up on him not eating with his hands.
They are wary of him, because his background is not fully known to them either and the film has that beautiful tension of will be exposed/uncovered at any point.
He does have the trust of the godfather figure Aya (Ramamoorthy) who knows his father was a suicide bomber – we only learn this later in the film, from the French police who work with Michael.
Basically, Michael has to do a lot of code switching – with the gang, he has to be tough, macho, aggressive, Tamil and ready to defend himself and attack others, if called upon to do so.
With his handlers, he has to be French, upright and also have his wits about him.
His grandmother knows his role – which helps him navigate the home space easily enough.
Valin’s performance is key to the film’s success and the plot mostly hangs around a gang member Puvi (Puviraj Raveendran) falling in love with a young woman whose family are at odds with Aya – for what reason it isn’t absolutely clear – they run a fishmongers and resent having to pay protection/aid (for those still in Sri Lanka) money to Aya but in some ways it isn’t personal – towards the end of the film the two elderly gentlemen agree that the ‘love marriage’ can go ahead.
However, some family members are not happy – this provides the essential motor that drives the story along with the one that centres around the tension of will Michael be ‘uncovered’ by Aya and his henchmen.
The religious aspect is a little glossed over and does leave a question or two – many Sri Lankan Tamils are Hindu by background – most of the gang appear to be Hindu and Hindu iconography is ever present in the gang’s environment but his grandmother is a devout Catholic and does that make him more acceptable to the French (police)?
ACV rating: **** (four out of five)
Previously
Dheepan
Interview: Jacques Audiard
https://asianculturevulture.com/portfolios/dheepan-director-jacques-audiard-putting-the-outsider-centre-screen/
New British Asian Shorts – 5.45pm BFI NFT1
