Your Touch Makes Others Invisible
When a supernatural entity plagues a village community in war torn Northern Sri Lanka, a mother loses her son. Set in militarily occupied territory marked by 26 years of civil war, this hybrid docufiction made collaboratively, and secretly, with impacted Tamil communities lyrically examines the stories of missing people. A potent, elliptical protest poem moving with grace and purpose between disparate cinematic forms.
Programmer’s Note
Following his 2021 Filmmaker in Focus, Rajee Samarasinghe returns to BFMAF with his debut feature. This stunning, multifaceted work of collaboration continues his percipient exploration of the sociopolitical conditions of post-civil war Sri Lanka, where atrocities of the past have given way to agonising injustices of the present. Interweaving documentary and fictional scenes in a way that’s subtle yet distinctive, the film sensitively portrays the complexities of an ever-evolving situation. At its emotional heart are profoundly moving testimonies from mothers reckoning with the forced disappearances of their sons – families suspended in grief, left in a tortuous state of unknowing and tirelessly searching. The cinematography is marked with a stillness and elegance, static figures in expansive vistas and spaces imbued with absence. Yet beneath the calm is a quiet rage that demands justice for the missing and those left behind.
~ Alice Miller
Director Biography
Rajee Samarasinghe is a filmmaker born and raised amidst the decades-long civil war in Sri Lanka. He received his BFA from UC San Diego and his MFA from CalArts. Much of his work examines sociopolitical conditions in Sri Lanka through the scope of deconstructing ethnographic practices and the colonial gaze in contemporary media. His practice was born out of a desire to understand the circumstances around his childhood and often navigates the terrain of memory, migration, and impermanence.
Samarasinghe recently completed his debut feature film, Your Touch Makes Others Invisible, which explores post-civil war Sri Lanka. The project has received support from the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Program, Berlinale Talents’ Doc Station, Field of Vision, and True/False Film Festival’s PRISM program, and is set to have its world premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film in 2020, Samarasinghe was also awarded a MacDowell Fellowship in 2023 and a Yaddo Residency in 2024. He has had solo shows at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA – Modern Mondays), the Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, and the Los Angeles Filmforum (2220 Arts), among others.
Samarasinghe’s films have been exhibited at venues internationally including the Tiger Short Competition at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, New Directors/New Films by MoMA and Film at Lincoln Center, MoMA’s Doc Fortnight, BFI London Film Festival, FIDMarseille, Festival du nouveau cinéma, Oberhausen, Slamdance, SFFILM Festival, Melbourne IFF, Vancouver IFF, Guanajuato IFF, BlackStar, etc. He’s received the New Cinema Award at the Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, the Tíos Award for Best International Film at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, the Film House Award for Visionary Filmmaking at the Athens International Film + Video Festival, and the Best Video Art & Experimental Award at the Tirana Film Festival among others.
Director Filmography
Your Touch Makes Others Invisible (2024), You’re a Shadow (2024), Lotus-Eyed Girl (2023), Strangers (2022), Show Me Other Places (2021), Misery Next Time (2021), the past (2021), Untitled (2020), The Eyes of Summer (2020), Imitation of Life (2020), Untitled (2019), everyday star (2018), The Exile (2018), FOREIGN QUARTERS (2017), The Spectre Watches Over Her (2016), If I Were Any Further Away I’d Be Closer to Home (2016), An Appearance of Fortitude (2015), black widow summer set (2015), The Queen of Material (2014), Untitled (Horse) (2014), 01.39411.999 (2012)