Survival shapes Sri Lankan journalist-turned-filmmaker Someetharan’s Tamil movie, Neelira. Days before its April 3 release, as mid-day met the director, he said that the drama — set in 1988 against the backdrop of the Sri Lankan Civil War — is a lived reality retold. “I wasn’t just observing the war, I was born into it,” he recalled. Growing up in a militarised zone, he recounted how a three-kilometre journey to school would take over an hour. “Every few hundred metres, there would be a checkpoint. We had to get off our bicycles and open our school bags for inspection.”

Through Neelira, the director revisits the period. But he has shifted the lens on his war story by placing a wedding at the heart of the Naveen Chandra and Sananth Reddy-starrer. Playing out over the night before the wedding, Neelira tells the story of a family that is caught in the crossfire between the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). “Weddings are a time of joy and togetherness. But what happens when that celebration exists in the middle of conflict? Most people see war like a spectacle, like a game of who attacked whom. But I want to tell the story of the people who lived through it,” explained Someetharan. 

Someetharan. Picture Courtesy/PR; (right) Rana Daggubati. Pic/Instagram

The movie may have been handed a few trims by the Central Board of Film Certification, but Someetharan said the cuts didn’t dilute his voice. He added, “I respect that they didn’t want to butcher my film. They want the story to be seen for what it is — standing against the brutality of war.”