Funny Boy
Deepa Mehta Sri Lanka, Canada 2020 108 min M18 (Mature Content and Some Violence)
A young boy, Arjie, comes of age and navigates his sexuality amidst escalating racial tensions leading up to the Sri Lankan civil war in 1983.
Arjie, derided by his friends and family for his “funny” pastimes, finds an unexpected ally in his exuberant aunt Radha. Within the safety of this bond, he finds the courage to explore his gender presentation. However, as racial tensions rise amongst the Tamils and Sinhalese in a post-independence Sri Lanka, both Radha and a few years later, adolescent Arjie, face backlash from their Tamil families for their interracial relationships with their Sinhalese partners. Arjie increasingly grapples with being not only an ethnic minority, but also a boy in love with another boy. Based on the novel Funny Boy by Shyam Selvadurai, this film is a critical story that illuminates the turmoil and joys of love in a time of strife.
Synopsis Writer: Saksham Mehrotra
Q&A with Filmmaker(s)
7 Dec, Sun 2:00PM / 108 min
Oldham Theatre
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Funny Boy
Deepa Mehta
Sri Lanka, Canada
2020
English, Tamil, Sinhala
English
108 min
M18 (Mature Content and Some Violence)
Deepa Mehta
Deepa Mehta is an Indian-born Canadian filmmaker whose often provocative works explore transnational identities and social injustices. Her award-winning films include the Elemental Trilogy: Fire (1996), Earth (1998), and the Best Foreign Language Oscar nominee, Water (2005), as well as the Canadian Screen Award winner Funny Boy (2020). Mehta is an Officer of the Order of Canada, and has received the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement. With her deeply humanist and sumptuous works on taboo topics such as sexuality, religion and colonialism that have incensed conservatives, she has emerged as one of the foremost South Asian diasporic female directors.
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