Prasanna Vithanage
Directing
Biography
Born in 1962, Prasanna Vithanage became involved in theatre on leaving school. He translated and directed Bernard Shaw's "Arms and the Man" in 1986, and Dario Fo's "Trumpets and Raspberries" in 1991. In 1992, he directed his first film "Sisila Gini Gani" (Ice of Fire). It won nine OCIC (Sri Lanka) Awards including Best Director, Best Actor and Best Actress. Four years later in 1996 was his second feature "Anantha Rathriya" (Dark Night of the Soul), which he wrote and directed. It was based on Leo Tolstoy's last novel "Resurrection". It participated in several international film festivals and won a Jury's Special Mention in the First Pusan International Film Festival. The film also won all the main awards at the 1996 Sri Lanka Film Critics Forum Awards (affiliated with FIPRESCI) including awards for Most Outstanding Film, Best Director and Best Screenwriter. "Pawuru Walalu" (Walls Within), his third feature in 1997 won the Best Actress Award for Nita Fernando in her role as Violet, at the 1998 Singapore International Film Festival. It even won ten out of eleven awards including Best Picture and Best Director at the Sri Lanka Film Critics Forum Awards. His fourth feature "Purahanda Kaluwara" (Death on a Full Moon Day) of the same year, 1997, which he wrote and directed was produced by NHK (Japanese Broadcasting Corporation). It won the Grand Prix at the Amiens Film Festival. Initially banned by the minister in charge of film industry, it was released after a yearlong legal battle. It was given the release under the supreme court verdict. Since it has become one of the most successful film in the more than half a century history of cinema in Sri Lanka. Prasanna Vithanage completed "Ira Madiyama" (August Sun) his fifth film in 2003. It went on to win many international awards and was featured prominently in the world festival circuit. In 2007, Vithanage co-produced the hit film "Machan" a comedy about a group of working class con artists posing as a handball team, directed by "The Full Monty" producer Uberto Pasolini. "Machan" premiered at the 65th Venice Film Festival in 2008. It was shown widely all over the world winning 11 international awards. 2008 also saw the world premiere of Prasanna Vithanage's sixth feature film as director, "Akasa Kusum" (Flowers of the Sky) in Pusan, Korea and screened over forty film festivals to wide acclaim winning numerous international awards. "Oba Nathuwa Oba Ekka" (With You, Without You) is his seventh feature. His feature debut Documentary "Silence in the Courts" was the first Documentary film which had a theatrical run in Sri Lanka, despite being initially banned from public screening by the Colombo District Court of Sri Lanka. His historical drama film 'Gaadi - Children of the Sun' (2019) won Cultural Diversity Award at Asia Pacific Screen Awards and ran for 98 days theatrically in Sri Lanka. 'Paradise' (2023) is his first Indian language film in Malayalam, Hindi, Tamil and Sinhala. 'Paradise' had its World Premiere at the 28th Busan International Film Festival 2023 and won the Kim Jeseok Award.
Known For
Two friends, Manoj (Gihan De Chickera), a bartender, and Stanley (Dharmapriya Dias), a fruit vendor, wish to immigrate to the West to seek their fortune, but have difficulties getting their visa applications approved. They come across an application to a handball tournament in Bavaria, and not even knowing what the game is, they submit themselves and a group of friends as the "Sri Lanka National Handball Team". For appearance's sake, they begin minimal training and then seek travel visas from the German Embassy. Their plans to simply escape into the West upon arrival in Germany are thwarted by the quick appearance of the tournament organizers and an arena of fans eager to see the prowess of the Sri Lanka National Handball Team.
Machan
In 1814, a nobleman from the Kandian Kingdom of Sri Lanka helped the British army to revolt against the king of Southern India, but was driven to a traitor. His wives have to choose between committing suicide or marrying outcasts. Instead of suicide, young and beautiful Tikiri chooses to marry an untouchable, named Vijaya.
Gaadi - Children of the Sun
A story about two young, impressionable kids whose ideas about faith are constantly questioned and changed as their little world expands and takes into its fold, their country's fast-changing socio-political landscape.
Bhagwan Bharose
During a Mayoral election in a small town in the Hill Capital, the son of the opposing candidate is missing while on a trip to Worlds End. The opposing candidate who is a leading lawyer has a mistress named Annette, who now becomes the main suspect. A search begins around Worlds End involving the police and the army, thereby involving the media and people to follow the story.
Fire on Ice
Suwisal has turned 40. He's a forgetful businessman, a philanderer, indifferent to life around him, including his young and lovely fiancée. A visit to the house of his childhood triggers memories that continue to cascade when he is called for jury duty to hear the case against Piyum, a servant he seduced and abandoned 20 years before. Now a prostitute, she is on trial for murder.
Dark Night of the Soul
No description available.
The Gambler
Drama about a father who refuses to believe in his son's death at war.
Death on a Full Moon Day
An Indian tourist couple arrive in the hill country of crisis ridden Sri Lanka to celebrate their 5th wedding anniversary. But, when things take an unexpected turn, conflicts deepen revealing cracks in their relationship.
Paradise
Set in Sri Lanka during the mid-1990s, August Sun tells three simultaneous stories against the backdrop of the country's savage civil war (1983 – 2009).
August Sun
The film set, in post war Sri Lanka, brings us close to two characters who collide quite accidentally, and through them we experience the deep and seemingly unbridgeable chasm that conflict almost always creates. Will love help them cross the bridge? Or will the past continue to color the present? A man and a woman from the two ends of the thirty-year-old bloody civil war in Sri Lanka discover that the color of love is blue, and life, shades of grey.
With You, Without You
A Silver screen idol of yesteryear a faded star today. In the web of a scandal the limelight is all her again. A long forgotten secret resurfaces making her undertake the most painful journey ever.
Flowers of the Sky
Two women were denied justice and a journalist fails in his struggle to deliver justice to them, a filmmaker embarks on a quest to unearth the cause for that injustice.
Silence in the Courts
Sri Lankan director Prasanna Vithanage sets this tragic story of the fifties in the walled city of Galle Fort, where Violet, a middle-aged woman, has raised two daughters alone. One is married and one engaged, and she seeks to get them settled as the reappearance of Victor, her lost first love, makes her wonder if she might also be happy.
Walls Within
After his wife leaves him, a man with a severe case of OCD who fears that his own urine is contaminating everything around him, admits himself to a mental hospital for treatment to overcome his fear and win his wife back.
Dirty, Yellow, Darkness
Three Sri Lankan filmmakers renowned for their internationally acclaimed films based on the Sri Lankan civil war, join in to make one film to express their views on post-war reality.