‘For a son’ invited for public release in Italy
Kaushalya Fernando and Julian Wijesekara in a scene from ‘For a Son’
Suranga Katugampola’s maiden feature film, a Sri Lanka-Italy co-production ‘Puthekuta’ (For A son) started its public release in Italy on March 30. This is a rare opportunity and good news for Sri Lankan cinema as a film made by a young Sri Lankan filmmaker is being selected for public screening in a foreign country. It will be screened in Italian cities of Milano, Verona, Bologna, Firenze, Napoli, Messina, Catania, Salerno, Potenza, Caserta, Bari, and Rome.
Centred on the wider theme of migration, the film revolves around alienation, loss of cultural and social identity and problems arising from generation gaps. It narrates about a Sri Lankan mother who struggles in Italy to make a living while bringing up her only son with ‘Sri Lankan identity’ in an alien backdrop. This creates a contradiction, contrast and a clash between the two.
Sunita, a middle-aged Sri Lankan woman, lives with her teenage son on the outskirts of a northern Italian city where she works as a caregiver.
The relationship between mother and son is fraught with tension and silence.
Having grown up in Italy, the boy is a cultural hybrid his mother struggles to understand, as she fights to live in a country to which she does not want to belong to.
In a director’s note, Suranga speaking about his debut feature stated “I wanted a minimalist film, simple and close as possible to the reality.”
“A very minimalistic film was born. made with moments of everyday and household life, at times repetitive. A story of any other province in northern italy. I didn’t want to write any precise dialogues. Everything was improvised during the shooting, adopted by actors to suit what they were feeling at that time. The words in the end were chosen by them,” he added.
The film toured several international film festivals and at the 52nd Pesaro International Film Festival in July 2016, it won rave reviews and its lead actress Kaushalya Fernando won special mention from the Jury. The Jury noted “the film of Suranga Deshapriya Katugampala: for the emotional story of an intimacy that imposes itself on the screen as an authentic social portrait; for it’s realism that fades into a seductive symbolic map; and for the rendition of the leading actress Kaushalya Fernando who expresses through her anxious breathing and silent glances the fatigue of the path to full multiculturality”. The cast includes Kaushalya Fernando, Julian Wijesekara, Nella Pozzerle Louis, Shirantha Fernando, Isabella Dilavello and Vishan Maduka Fernando.
Filmmaker Suranga (middle) directing his debut feature