SRI LANKAN DIRECTOR GOES TO BANGKOK

I've been giving Bangkok's World Film Festival a hard time, but it looks like they're doing something right with Vimuk-thi Jayasundara's movie FORSAKEN LAND. The movie won the Camera d'Or at Cannes this year (sharing the prize with ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW) which seemed like a victory for the director who had been threatened by the Sri Lankan military while making his "unpatriotic" movie.

Winning the Camera d'Or gave the movie a high profile and it was released in Sri Lanka, but almost immediately the country's National Film Corporation pulled it out of 5 major theaters, and the producer canceled the rest of the engagements to protest this treatment. No reason was given by the Film Corporation for pulling the film.

Director Vimuk-thi Jayasundara claims he's worried he might be arrested, and has reportedly gone to France before appearing at the World Film Festival in Bangkok to present his movie.

The synopsis for the movie:
"Neither war nor peace, just the wind blowing
God is absent, but still the sun rises
Over a lonely home between two trees in a forsaken land
A hand emerges from the water, begging for help
A legendary woman searches for love
A soldier kills a stranger, and is burdened by guilt"

Which sounds pretty deadly, and this Variety review says it's pretty but boring. However, no one should be stopped from making a movie (unless it stars Martin Lawrence), and no one deserves the barely literate criticisms appearing on this message board.