Sanjeewa Pushpakumara

Sri Lankan film director, writer, and producer.

Sanjeewa Pushpakumara

Sanjeewa Pushpakumara (b. 1977) is an award-winning Sri Lankan filmmaker and educator. A graduate of Chung-Ang University, South Korea (MFA, PhD), his films Flying Fish, Burning Birds, and Peacock Lament have premiered at major festivals including Locarno, Rotterdam, Busan, London, IFFI-Goa, MoMA, and Tokyo, winning multiple international awards. He has participated in leading programs such as Cannes Cinéfondation Résidence, Berlinale Talents, and Biennale College Cinema, and served on juries including the Jury Résidence du Festival de Cannes 2023. In 2019, he founded Colombo Film School and has published several books on cinema.

Sanjeewa Pushpakumara

"stories filled with rage, suffering, sexual abandon and calamity, but the director films them with cool detachment... A work of remarkable restraint. Sri Lankan Cinema has found its true modernist"

Tony Rayn

"Flying Fish offers an extraordinary journey to the heart of Sri Lankan darkness with no less vivid, sensual images. Set during the 25-year civil war that convulsed Sri Lanka, Pushpakumara's remarkable debut draws on his own experience growing up in a remote village, where ordinary lives were degraded by the struggle between Tamil Tigers and government forces (shown as equally brutal). Recurrent close-up images of exotic insects and landscapes of startling beauty intersperse scenes of sexual exploitation, making this a far from comfortable films to watch. But there's no denying its impassioned originality."

Ian Christi

Sanjeewa Pushpakumara

Sanjeewa Pushpakumara

Sanjeewa Pushpakumara

Flying Fish (Igillena Maluwo, 2011)

Flying Fish
(Igillena Maluwo, 2011)