Latest news with #LittleJaffna
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Little Jaffna,' ‘Mahabharata' Lead London Indian Film Festival Lineup (EXCLUSIVE)
The London Indian Film Festival will open its 16th edition with the U.K. premiere of 'Little Jaffna.' Directed by Lawrence Valin, the film, which he also co-wrote and stars in, explores the Tamil diaspora experience in France through the prism of gang culture in the area of central Paris known informally as Little Jaffna, named after the capital city of the Northern Province of Sri Lanka. It is set against the backdrop of the Sri Lankan civil war, which ravaged the island nation from 1983 to 2009. The film has had considerable festival play including at Venice and Toronto. More from Variety Rotterdam Winner 'Bad Girl,' Venice Selection 'Little Jaffna' Bookend IFFLA 2025 as Fest Expands Industry Programming (EXCLUSIVE) Yao Chen's Bad Rabbit Pictures Plots 'Fleabag'-Style Premium Short Drama About Chinese Sea Goddess (EXCLUSIVE) Rima Das' Berlin-Bound Busan Winner 'Village Rockstars 2' Boarded by Diversion for World Sales (EXCLUSIVE) The festival's central gala will be the restored version of Peter Brook's legendary interpretation of Indian epic 'The Mahabharata.' The screening at BFI Imax aligns with the 100th birth year of Brook, with expectations that some of the original cast will attend from France. Director Rima Das returns to the festival with Busan debuting 'Village Rockstars 2,' continuing her exploration of rural Indian life through the story of an Assamese teenager who clings to childhood dreams while confronting contemporary challenges facing young people in rural India, from flood threats to family responsibilities. The program also features Lakshmipriya Devi's 'Boong,' which tells the story of a disobedient schoolboy in Manipur who naively risks his safety crossing into Myanmar to search for his missing father in an attempt to mend his broken family. Set against the Himalayas, Vinod Kapri's 'Pyre' offers a sumptuously photographed narrative about an elderly couple deeply in love but struggling to survive in a changing mountain society. Beyond film screenings, the festival will celebrate emerging British Asian talent through a new industry event developed in collaboration with RIFCO Theatre. The initiative aims to encourage more U.K. South Asians to enter the film industry while exploring co-production opportunities. This professional component will be accompanied by the festival's popular program of British-Asian shorts. The London Indian Film Festival runs July 16-23 at BFI Southbank and BFI Imax. The Birmingham Indian Film Festival runs July 17-23 at the Midlands Arts Centre. Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week 'Harry Potter' TV Show Cast Guide: Who's Who in Hogwarts? 25 Hollywood Legends Who Deserve an Honorary Oscar
The Guardian
04-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Paris-based thriller offers fresh inside take on French-Tamil community
It has been hailed as one of the most innovative and surprising French gangster films this year: a suspense movie that tears through Paris's Tamil neighbourhood. The police thriller Little Jaffna, which opened in France this week, is set in the French capital's Tamil community, which has rarely been represented on screen – and never in an action film by a French actor, writer and director of Tamil heritage giving his inside take on the legacy of Sri Lanka's bloody ethnic conflict for younger generations living far away in Europe. Lawrence Valin, 35, who was born in the Greater Paris area to Tamil parents, wrote, directed and starred in his own film after feeling exasperated at never being offered leading roles in France and instead being cast in bit parts as a mystic or rose-seller and asked to put on a fake Indian accent. 'In France, the image we have of a French-Tamil person is a migrant – I wanted to change that, have a new representation, to show new role models,' Valin told Arte TV. Little Jaffna, which won this year's top jury prize and the audience award at France's major thriller festival, Reims Polar, is set among the many Tamil restaurants and boutiques in the area between Paris's Gare du Nord station and La Chapelle, known as Little Jaffna after the capital of the Tamil-majority Northern Province in Sri Lanka. Michael, a French police officer of Tamil heritage, played by Valin, is tasked with infiltrating a gang involved in people-smuggling and racketeering that channels funds to the separatist militant group known as the Tamil Tigers. The film is shot in Tamil and French on the streets of Paris. TV screens in living rooms and cafes show a backdrop of Sri Lanka's 26-year brutal and bloody ethnic conflict in which least 100,000 people were killed. The conflict officially ended in 2009, but its complex legacy remains. The film, a colourful exploration of Paris's Little Jaffna and a comment on civil war, is ultimately about the complexities of French identity and how younger generations deal with a conflict far away. The French culture magazine Telerama called it a mix of 'highly stylised action and geopolitical immersion'. The last major feature film centred on Tamils in France was a decade ago when the French director Jacques Audiard – who made the recent trans Mexican cartel musical, Emilia Pérez – won the Cannes film festival Palme d'Or for Dheepan, about three Tamil refugees on a housing estate outside Paris. Audiard said at the time that he wanted to show characters radically different from his own experience. This time, Valin wanted to show the Tamil community in Paris from the inside. He chose the thriller format because he wanted to find a gripping way to introduce French cinemagoers to the Sri Lankan conflict, he said. But he has acknowledged that a violent police drama was far from a portrayal of all Tamils in Paris. 'I thought that a thriller, an action film, suspense – all those universal codes of cinema we know – is what would bring people in to watch the film,' Valin said. 'They'll come to see it saying that above all it's a good thriller. Then, as a kind of doggy bag, I send them home [with an insight into] the Sri Lankan conflict, and this community. For me it's a way to open doors. I've made a first film, and that now allows a generation of younger film-makers to make their own films, saying: 'If he did it, I can too.''
France 24
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- France 24
French film 'Not all men, but...' pokes fun at stereotypes and sexism
Michel Leclerc has never shied away from delicate social topics and the French director has now managed to inject humour into the issue of sexual assault in "Not all men, but…". Critic Perrine Quennesson tells us why his gamble has paid off and why entertaining performances from Léa Drucker and Benjamin Lavernhe bring levity to a heavy subject. We also hear about Régis Wargnier's long-awaited feature "La Réparation", a family mystery set between France and Taiwan which unites a stellar cast. Meanwhile, filmmaker Lawrence Valin marks himself out as a rising talent with "Little Jaffna", a thriller set in Paris's Tamil community. Plus, Femen co-founder Oxana Shachko is the subject of a moving biopic which pays tribute to her courage and activism as part of the feminist pressure group.
