Q&A with director Rajee Samarasinghe!
YOUR TOUCH MAKES OTHERS INVISIBLE, directed by Rajee Samarasinghe, is a surreal and lyrical exploration of disappearances in a small post-war community in northern Sri Lanka, where memories of interactions between the Tamils and the Sinhalese linger.
Fusing allegorical magic realism and investigative documentary, and made collaboratively with impacted locals, the film is an examination of thousands of missing persons through 26 years of civil war in Sri Lanka. The nonfiction elements in this film are structured by a fictional narrative thread, which tells the tale of a mother who loses her son to a supernatural entity plaguing her community—a nod to the actual disappearances in the region.
Sinhalese filmmaker Samarasinghe’s feature debut is both a documentary about forced disappearances during the government’s war against the Tamil Tiger separatists, and a hushed, often nonverbal tone poem on the themes of mourning, trauma, and absence. The hybrid near-impressionistic film creates a shifting monument to memories, and is a stirring, staunch defiance of the inevitability of disavowed justice.
“25 New Faces of Independent Film, 2020” – Filmmaker Magazine
