French director Jacques Audiard didn’t know it then, but had a casting coup on his hands when he signed on Jesuthasan Anthonyhasan as the lead in his movie Dheepan, about three Sri Lankan Tamil refugees who pretend to be a family in order to qualify for refugee status in France. Who better than Anthonyhasan to play the part? A former Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam child soldier who fled to France 22 years ago, Anthonyhasan is better known in literary circles as the writer Shobhasakthi. Translations of his novel Gorilla and short story collection The MGR Murder Trial reveal Anthonyhasan’s ability to present the experiences of the Sri Lanka Tamil population through a searing blend of memory and fiction.
Dheepan, which is in Tamil and also stars Chennai theatre actor Kalieaswari Srinivasan, won the Cannes Film Festival’s top prize, the Golden Palm. Although many long-time Cannes watchers were surprised at the jury’s decision, it appears that the movie’s gritty and sobering exploration of the issues faced by refugees in France is perfectly timed with ongoing debates over Europe’s stand towards immigrants and asylum seekers.
“The director and casting director didn’t know I was a writer when I met them,” said 47 year-old Anthonyhasan in a telephone interview from Paris. “They knew me only as an actor.” Anthonyhasan had appeared in Chennai director Leena Manimekalai’s 2011 docufiction Sengadal, which explores the plight of fishermen at Dhanushkodi. “Jacques made me perform a small scene before casting me. I told him about my life and my writing during the shoot.”
Dheepan is fundamentally a romance about the sparks that fly between the man and the woman who are pretending to be husband and wife, Anthonyhasan added. “It’s basically a love story between two people who have escaped Sri Lanka,” he said. “The film shines a light on the Sri Lankan refugee population in France, and shows how violence follows them even after they have left their country. It’s a bit like my own story, but the solution offered by the film is different.”
Although he is best known for his writing, Anthonyhasan says he has always dreamt of appearing in the movies. “Cinema runs in Tamil blood,” he said. In the short story The MGR Murder Trial from his latest anthology, translated by Anushiya Ramaswamy, he details the popularity of the Tamil cinema icon MG Ramachandran among Tamils in Sri Lanka.
“Strictly speaking, going to the movies would not be characterized as a leisure activity – in fact, it was life’s principle, duty and ambition,” he writes. In a footnote in the anthology, Ramaswamy writes that Anthonyhasan took on the pen name Shobasakthi in memory of the Tamil actor Sobha, who committed suicide at the age of 17 after appearing in a string of acclaimed films, including Mullum Mallarum and Pasi.
Dheepan is likely to travel far and wide across festivals and screens, given Audiard’s huge reputation in France and the prestige attached to the Golden Palm award. “The movie will draw attention to the issues faced by us,” Anthonyhasan said. “The movie talks about many issues that I have been writing about. It is a very political movie despite being a love story.”
At a press conference in Cannes after Dheepan’s premiere, Audiard, who has previously directed the acclaimed films The Beat That My Heart Skipped, A Prophet and Rust and Bone, cheerfully admitted that he “couldn’t have located Sri Lanka on the map”, but he badly wanted to “make a French film with people who speak Tamil”. The portions that depict Sri Lanka were shot in Tamil Nadu, as well as a sequence with a London setting that is actually the hill station Ooty, said Suresh Balaje, co-founder of the Chennai-based production company Wide Screen Films, which handled the shoot.
“George Pius, my partner at Wide Screen, and I went the official premiere of Dheepan at Cannes, and it was a fantastic experience,” he said. “It was a great feeling to be a part of this. There was some criticism of the way the movie ended, but I think the topicality of the film’s themes must have struck a chord with the jury.”
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Dheepan, which is in Tamil and also stars Chennai theatre actor Kalieaswari Srinivasan, won the Cannes Film Festival’s top prize, the Golden Palm. Although many long-time Cannes watchers were surprised at the jury’s decision, it appears that the movie’s gritty and sobering exploration of the issues faced by refugees in France is perfectly timed with ongoing debates over Europe’s stand towards immigrants and asylum seekers.
“The director and casting director didn’t know I was a writer when I met them,” said 47 year-old Anthonyhasan in a telephone interview from Paris. “They knew me only as an actor.” Anthonyhasan had appeared in Chennai director Leena Manimekalai’s 2011 docufiction Sengadal, which explores the plight of fishermen at Dhanushkodi. “Jacques made me perform a small scene before casting me. I told him about my life and my writing during the shoot.”
Dheepan is fundamentally a romance about the sparks that fly between the man and the woman who are pretending to be husband and wife, Anthonyhasan added. “It’s basically a love story between two people who have escaped Sri Lanka,” he said. “The film shines a light on the Sri Lankan refugee population in France, and shows how violence follows them even after they have left their country. It’s a bit like my own story, but the solution offered by the film is different.”
Although he is best known for his writing, Anthonyhasan says he has always dreamt of appearing in the movies. “Cinema runs in Tamil blood,” he said. In the short story The MGR Murder Trial from his latest anthology, translated by Anushiya Ramaswamy, he details the popularity of the Tamil cinema icon MG Ramachandran among Tamils in Sri Lanka.
“Strictly speaking, going to the movies would not be characterized as a leisure activity – in fact, it was life’s principle, duty and ambition,” he writes. In a footnote in the anthology, Ramaswamy writes that Anthonyhasan took on the pen name Shobasakthi in memory of the Tamil actor Sobha, who committed suicide at the age of 17 after appearing in a string of acclaimed films, including Mullum Mallarum and Pasi.
Dheepan is likely to travel far and wide across festivals and screens, given Audiard’s huge reputation in France and the prestige attached to the Golden Palm award. “The movie will draw attention to the issues faced by us,” Anthonyhasan said. “The movie talks about many issues that I have been writing about. It is a very political movie despite being a love story.”
At a press conference in Cannes after Dheepan’s premiere, Audiard, who has previously directed the acclaimed films The Beat That My Heart Skipped, A Prophet and Rust and Bone, cheerfully admitted that he “couldn’t have located Sri Lanka on the map”, but he badly wanted to “make a French film with people who speak Tamil”. The portions that depict Sri Lanka were shot in Tamil Nadu, as well as a sequence with a London setting that is actually the hill station Ooty, said Suresh Balaje, co-founder of the Chennai-based production company Wide Screen Films, which handled the shoot.
“George Pius, my partner at Wide Screen, and I went the official premiere of Dheepan at Cannes, and it was a fantastic experience,” he said. “It was a great feeling to be a part of this. There was some criticism of the way the movie ended, but I think the topicality of the film’s themes must have struck a chord with the jury.”