My first meeting with Indika Ferdinando, a well-acclaimed film director, was at his office at the University of the Visual and Performing Arts on 26 August 2022. At that time, he was the Dean of the Faculty of Dance and Drama. We discussed the possibility of having him conduct some short film trainings for young female filmmakers in Sri Lanka under a development initiative. He was given the choice of selecting a group of budding female filmmakers from the Southern, Central, Eastern, and Northern Provinces.
“I will be happy to train the youngsters from the North,” he said, and voluntarily picked the group of filmmakers from the North and explained why he did so. “I always have this feeling of guilt that we, as members of academia and the film industry, have not adequately shared our expertise with this group that is often deprived of equal opportunities. I know that the people in the North have a lot of heart-touching stories to tell. It is important to give them the right tools and skills to tell their stories on their own terms.”
We conducted a three-day training for 25 young girls from the Northern Province on making short films using a mobile phone. Indika was the chief trainer. I was there on all three days with him and observed him repeatedly stressing one thing: “The presence of every second in your film should have logical reasoning”. He also said: “Your story should engage the audience at different levels: emotional, intellectual, spiritual, and personal”. This was the short interaction with which I went to watch his second feature film, “Wedi Nowadina Lamai” (Bulletproof Children).
A scene from ‘Bulletproof Children’
Bulletproof Children
This narrative is written in view of sharing my personal reading on the overall story value of the film and not necessarily to comment on production and the technological elements. Several people who had commented or shared their views on the film had indicated that this was a film about a married couple that is carrying the dead body of their beloved son in a strange cardboard box on a public bus travelling from Colombo to Anuradhapura in the night.
Very little is discussed as to why this incident happened on the day Sri Lanka won the Cricket World Cup final against Australia. However, for me, this is a story not just about a dead child but perhaps about a dead nation that was suffering from ethnic tension and economic hardship. Indika has captured the cross section of Sri Lankan society that was living during the late 1990s, when the tension between the LTTE and armed forces was at its peak.
The entire story is filmed on a bus ride, which is used as an ideal metaphor to depict the life struggles of a society that is economically and socially deprived and polarised at a given time. The main story revolves around the married couple whose journey is full of tension, stress, fear, anxiety, hopelessness, loss, and pai, etc. for a couple of reasons: Firstly, it is illegal for them to carry a dead body in a public bus without having a death certificate. The bus driver was almost impatient and not willing to take them on the bus. Once, he tried to reverse the bus to the police station. Throughout the journey, he was not willing to take any responsibility for carrying avdead body in this way.
Secondly, they are almost too high to be caught by the army at the check-ups. It was said that the individuals in the army were vigilant enough to find at least a matchbox, which the driver kept on reminding whenever there was a checkpoint to come. Thirdly, both husband and wife are going through a tremendous sense of hopelessness as they could not do anything for the dead child other than carry him in a cardboard box on public transportation. Fourth, there was a lot of suspicion in the bus—the majority of the people travelling in it do not believe that the dead baby belongs to the couple. While this is the story of a single family, Indika has crafted it in a way to thoughtfully represent the larger population living with the same social condition.
The diverse characters in the movie bring the story together
Diverse characters
What makes this film different altogether is the selection of diverse characters. The journey of all characters reminded me of what Indika said at the workshop. In the same bus journey, there were other people in addition to the married couple: a young couple who was eloping, two elderly government servants, a very sick grandmother and her autistic grandson, a group of schoolchildren and a male teacher, a good-looking nobleman, a magician, two Buddhist monks—one of them is a young monk—an overweight woman, a cricket enthusiast, and a few others.
Unlike in traditional films, the main story has a logical connection with a bundle of other stories. Simply, everyone on the bus journey had a distinct story – Perhaps a story with a lot of confrontations and struggles, every one of them representing a unique social status. The eloping couple was fighting throughout; at least one of them is not sure if they are making a meaningful trip; one of them wanted to help the couple in trouble with the strange cardboard box in their hand.
The elderly government servants were celebrating their monthly salary, but they were not confident about the future – similar to several other elderly government servants living at that time. They are even ready to spend the entire night in the bus before they go to work the next day. The sick grandmother is returning from the hospital with the saline bottle unremoved, with the help of a kind-hearted grandson, to see a dying grandfather attacked by a wild elephant. This depicted the kind of love and compassion that elders share within their own family institution.
The street magician in the bus was such a phenomenal character that it was clear that at least something in real life is “real” and no one can change or challenge it. The children in the bus are returning home from Colombo after attending a singing competition and being disappointed at becoming the runners-up. They represented the fact that children make other people happy and that they can feel the hardships of life more than the elders. All the children in the bus were given adequate attention and focus. The youngest boy amongst them had a different journey and was given more attention. When everyone in the bus had a different mode, goal, feel, motivation, and interest based on their differences, it was him who felt so much for the dead child; he too lost his brother with the same name, Sandaru.
Very importantly, the cricket lover was a real establishment to show how people immersed themselves in the world of glory even at an economically challenging time, disregarding the difficulties they faced in their daily lives. The good-looking gentleman disappeared at some point after collecting donations in the bus to help the couple with the dead child carry out final rituals. These are not just the stories of individuals. Everyone on this journey represented a part of the living society; therefore, everyone had a purpose for their presence. Managing the overall arc of the main story with such a complex set of sub-stories requires a huge amount of crafting ability. Indika surely had it with him.
Indika very precisely articulated that the tradition of celebrating and romanticising the big victories of a few sometimes does not allow us to critically look at the living realities of many. This film quite accurately highlights how people at large live in their own bubbles, disregarding the necessity of making collective efforts to overcome challenges faced by people at large. He has done an extremely hard job of highlighting the correct milestones in the stories of every individual. The film is a little bit commercial, slightly theatrical, somewhat magical, and largely real. Some stories in these films end before the bus journey ends, but many come alone with the bus.
(Dr. M.C. Rasmin is a senior lecturer attached to the Department of Journalism and Digital Media of the Sri Lanka Technological Campus (SLTC) Research University. He is a media educator, researcher, and trainer with 15 years of experience in the field of media development.)
(The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication.)