Red Butterfly Dream (2016)

Three of the four decades of my life have been spent in the midst of a tragic social transition in Sri Lankan history. Two militant uprisings, one by the Sinhalese and the other by the Tamils, claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. Black July in 1983 triggered a civil war between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan forces and it continued for almost three decades. The war caused more than 100,00 dead and displaced over 300,000 people.However, at one point it struck me that there is something unsaid about this three decade long human catastrophe. I visualized the telling of that story in my mind for a long time. After a few years since the end of the war there came a point that I felt was the ideal time to share my story.Today, unearthing the treasures believed to have been buried by ancient kings is underway all across the Island as a result of that. These events paved the best setting for me to tell my story. Following the end of the war the roads connecting the North and the South were reopened and the Tamil people in the North had the chance of coming to Colombo with no hassle after 30 years. I saw something out of the ordinary in their journey. Therefore, I used a Tamil girl's very first journey to Colombo as the exposition scene of the film. Furthermore, I was able to introduce the basic theme of the film from the outset by drawing a parallel between an ancient myth and her character.