Ira Madiyama is a 2005 Sri Lankan bilingual feature film directed by Award-winning Prasanna Vithanage and produced by Soma Edirisinghe for EAP Films. It stars Peter D'Almeida, and Nimmi Harasgama in lead roles along with Namal Jayasinghe and Mohamed Rahfiulla. Music composed by Lakshman Joshep de Saram. It is the 1047th Sri Lankan film in the Sinhala cinema. The film premiered at the Montreal World Film Festival. A website "www.iramadiyama.com" was launched along with the film, which is for the first time in Sri Lanka.
Synopsis
Ira Madiyama is set in Sri Lanka during the mid-1990s and tells three simultaneous stories against the backdrop of the country's savage civil war. Chamari is searching for her husband, a Sinhalese Sri Lankan Air Force pilot shot down in flight, whom she believes has been taken prisoner by the Tamil Tigers. Desperate to know the truth, she enlists a sympathetic journalist and sets out on a journey to track him down. Meanwhile, eleven-year-old Tamil Muslim Arfath is struggling to keep his companion and friend, a dog, while the family together with the entire village is forced to evacuate by a rebel army. The third narrative follows Duminda, a young soldier who walks into a brothel to find his sister among the working girls. The main action of the film takes place in Sri Lanka's northern territories, parts of which are controlled by the Tamil rebels who have created a de facto separate state. These stories are about people who are struggling to hold on to their hopes and dreams while being swept up by the torrents of war. The film is about their quest for life.
Ira Madiyama was a bi-lingual film in Sinhala & Tamil.
The father and son characters of Hassan and Arfath, were real-life refugees who had fled their hometown of Mannar under similar circumstances.
Although, set against the backdrop of war and ethnic conflict the film focused on the social fabrics of the nation. There were no warfare scenes in the film.
The events in Ira Madiyama take place on the day Sri Lanka became world champions when they beat Australia in the 1996 Cricket World Cup final in Lahore, Pakistan. It is also the period immediately following the breakdown of the first attempt at peace talks between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. So it was a time of great tension and uncertainty mixed with elation at the cricketing success.
Theatrical Release
Sri Lanka
Ira Madiyama saw its domestic release across Sri Lanka on 10 February 2005. It opened across 16 centres islandwide. It ran for 55 days to good critical and commercial response.
Ira Madiyama and Akasa Kusum are set for limited release from 18 June 2010, at Sinema Old School a 136-seater high definition cinema screening local and award-winning films in Singapore.
