සුළඟ එනු පිණිස

'Forsaken Land' offers a sighting of a potentially

major new talent 'The Forsaken Land'.

Michael

Wilmington, Tribune movie critic Published September 1, 2006

An extraordinary debut film from Sri Lankan writer-director

Vimukthi Jayasundara, "The Forsaken Land," is a

stark, lyrical and affecting portrait of war's aftermath as

seen from the edges of the old conflict.

In images

that sear themselves into your memory, Jayasundara shows a

watchful young girl (Pumidika Sapurni Peiris), a young

soldier (Mahendra Perera), his faithless wife (Nilupili

Jayawardena) and devout unmarried sister (Kaushalya Fernando)

caught up in the events that follow a cease-fire between

rebels and the government.

Throughout, in barren

landscapes that are deliberately meant to evoke the absurdist

nightmares of Franz Kafka and Samuel Beckett, the uneasy

peace seems as threatening as the preceding bloodshed.

Jayasundara's picture, which took the 2005 Cannes Film

Festival Camera d'Or for best first film (an award

previously won by Dennis Hopper and Spike Lee), is done with

sparse dialogue and haunting tableaux of the isolated rural

landscape.

"Land" has some of the strange

poetry of Ingmar Bergman's great 1968 anti-war film

"Shame," but it's a more cryptic, exotic work,

burningly immediate yet imbued with some of the quality of

timeless fable. Only 27, Jayasundara seems a moviemaker of

high promise.

"Forsaken Land," a work of

sophistication and cinematic eloquence, may signal the

arrival of a major international talent.

"Some

films offer up their mysteries openly; others, like the

quietly affecting Sri Lankan film "The Forsaken

Land," keep their secrets close, revealing them

gradually shot by shot, scene by scene." - New York

Times

"Beautiful but withholding...

[Jayasundara's] command of film language is evident and his

evocation of postwar trauma is haunting." - Village

Voice

"An extraordinary debut film... Forsaken

Land, a work of sophistication and cinematic eloquence, may

signal the arrival of a major international talent." -

Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune

"Jayasundara has an undeniable gift for painting

haunting images." -Time Out Chicago

Avant-

garde Storytelling Stunning Sri Lankan debut evokes Tarkovsky

BY STEVE ERICKSON Jayasundara is even more inclined towards

abstraction and revelling in nature's beauty than Tarkovsky,

but his tracking shots are similar. Almost every scene in

"The Forsaken Land" is comprised of just one shot.

Each one plays like a mini-feature, often ending in a

surprising place.