From this month

Prasanna Vithanage’s seventh feature film “Oba Nathuwa Oba Ekka” (With You, Without You) will be released at CEL and Rithma circuit theatres islandwide this month.

Earlier the Censor Board or the Public Performance Board had requested the removal of some scenes to grant approval for public screening but the director had objected to this. Subsequently the film was not given authorization on the grounds that the filmmaker had refused to comply with the Board’s request. However the newly-appointed Censor Board cleared the film for public viewing under the “more suitable for adults” tag without any censorship.

Set in post-war Sri Lanka, the film is an adaptation from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novella Meek One. The film has won six international awards and been featured in 35 international film festivals all over the world. The awards include the Cyclo D’Or and the NETPAC Jury Prize at the 19th edition of the International Film Festival of Asian Cinema (FICA) in Vesoul, France, and the SIGNIS Award for Best Film at the 23rd African, Asian and Latin American Film Festival of Milano, Italy. It also won the Best Actress Award for lead actress Anjali Patil at the 43rd International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa last year.

When lonely, tortured pawnbroker Sarathsiri meets and marries the beautiful, enigmatic Selvi, he thinks he has finally found a way to put his past behind him. But a chance visit from an old friend opens up wounds that threaten to tear open the barely healing fabric of a mutilated nation coming to grips with the unspeakable cost of a thirty-year civil war. Will love help them cross the bridge? Or will the past continue to colour the present?

Indian actress Anjali Patil and theatre veteran Shyam Fernando star in the film.

The film is written and directed by Prasanna Vithanage, cinema-