Your touch makes others invisible - the world premiere of the award-winning new film "A Foreign Home" by the director

It is estimated that as many as 100,000 people, mostly from the minority Tamil community, went missing during Sri Lanka's 26-year civil war. Using a unique combination of interviews, news clips and reenactments, this documentary tells the harrowing story of families searching for their missing loved ones.

Sri Lanka's 26-year civil war was characterised by enforced disappearances by the military, one of the most egregious atrocities. It is estimated that up to 100,000 people, mostly from the Tamil minority, may have disappeared since the 1980s. Fifteen years after the war ended in 2009, families are still searching for their missing loved ones.

In his debut feature, Your Touch Makes Others Invisible, Sinhalese filmmaker Rajee Samarasinghe reflects on this tragic history through direct interviews, news clips, dramatic reenactments, and abstract symbolic imagery. Heartbreaking testimonies from grieving mothers are interwoven with fragmented fictional vignettes produced in collaboration with members of the Tamil community.

The film’s plot structure presents a series of propositions around a ghostly void, where the bodies of missing people go missing. This otherworldly quality is further enhanced by contemporary drone footage of war-torn areas that appear idyllic and unscarred yet have the texture of an alien invasion. Shot under challenging conditions through subversion and subterfuge, Samarasinghe’s film is a unique and compelling reflection on crime and bereavement.

– Srikanth Srinivasan