Director: Kannan Arunasalam
Country: Sri Lanka, United Kingdom
Language: English
Year: 2025
Run Time: 78 mins
Can fragile hope survive in a country built on forgetting?
The 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 three young activists, Melani, Buwanaka and Jeana, whose political awakening unfolds in real time as they organise demonstrations, face arrest, and confront a political system built to endure.
Director:
Kannan Arunasalam is a filmmaker and artist working across documentary film, installation, and sound. His work explores memory, resistance, and the afterlives of conflict and colonialism through long-term research and collaboration with communities whose histories have been marginalised or erased. His films have screened internationally in cinema, gallery, and academic contexts. Recent work includes Republic of Amnesia (2025) that has screened at Cornell, SOAS, NYU, Toronto, and Queen’s University, Belfast. Previous works include Sri Lanka’s Rebel Wife (2022), Witness; The Tent (2019), a dual-channel installation film exhibited at Yorkshire Contemporary (formerly The Tetley) in Leeds; and Possible Landscapes (2025), which premiered at BlackStar Film Festival.
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