“Republic of Amnesia” Film screening on Tuesday, April 7 at 6:00pm, at Williard Straight Theatre, Cornell Cinema

 

                     Republic of Amnesia | Official Trailer

Young activists lead Sri Lanka’s 2022 uprising, toppling an authoritarian president but can fragile hope survive in a country built on forgetting?

Directed by Kannan Arunasalam, Republic of Amnesia follows the rise and fall of Sri Lanka’s Aragalaya (“The Struggle”) the youth-led protest movement that forced authoritarian president Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country in 2022. At its heart are young activists like Melani, Buwanaka and Jeana, who organize marches, face arrest, and confront a political system built to endure. As they challenge a powerful dynasty, their struggle raises a deeper question: can fragile hope survive in a country built on forgetting?

As the spirit of the Aragalaya ripples across Asia, inspiring youth movements from Bangladesh to Indonesia, the film looks beyond the moment itself. It asks what remains and what is lost when a movement fades, and suggests that the struggle for democracy lies not only in institutions or leaders, but in the stories a society chooses to preserve.

Filmmaker Kannan Arunasalam will join for a conversation after the film with Daniel Bass, Senior Program Manager of the South Asia Program.

Free admission! Sponsored by the South Asia Program at the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.

About the filmmaker
Kannan Arunasalam is a British-Sri Lankan filmmaker working across documentary film and moving-image installation. His work explores memory, political resistance, and the legacies of conflict and colonialism. His installation The Tent (2019) was presented in a solo exhibition at Yorkshire Contemporary. His documentary Sri Lanka’s Rebel Wife (2021) was shortlisted for Best Documentary at the DIG Investigative Film Awards. He recently completed two feature documentaries: Republic of Amnesia (2025, UK/Sri Lanka), examining Sri Lanka’s 2022 Aragalaya protest movement, and Possible Landscapes (2025, US/Trinidad & Tobago), which premiered at the BlackStar Film Festival and explores intergenerational environmental experience.

In Sinhala, Tamil and English with English subtitles. More at republicofamnesia.film.

Part of our “Campus Collaborations” and “Doc Spots” series.

“Sri Lanka: an island in turmoil” by Delon Madavan and Anthony Goreau-Ponceaud in Echogéo

The English version of the article written by Anthony Goreau-Ponceaud and Delon Madavan, on the Sri Lankan crisis, published in the online academic journal Echogéo is available here

Abstract:

Sri Lanka is experiencing its worst economic crisis since its independence in 1948. Shortages and inflation of basic necessities (food, fuel, medicines) have provoked an unprecedented popular uprising of Sri Lankans since March 2022, across ethnic and religious divides, which led to the flight of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on July 9, 2022, and his resignation a few days later, putting an end to almost two decades of rule by the Rajapaksa brothers. This article looks back at the causes of this political, economic, social and now humanitarian crisis to glimpse the unprecedented nature of this protest and to question the mobilization of civil societies in an island long marked by the polarization of political life, and finally the geopolitical effects of this multifaceted crisis.

Anthony Goreau-Ponceaud et Delon Madavan« Sri Lanka: an island in turmoil »EchoGéo [En ligne], Sur le Vif, mis en ligne le 16 novembre 2022, consulté le 26 février 2026URL : http://journals.openedition.org/echogeo/23917 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/echogeo.23917