Vimukthi Jayasundara’s ‘The Turtle’s Look at Spy Stars’ Begins Filming

Sri Lankan author Vimukthi Jayasundarawhose film “The Forsaken Land” (2005) won the Camera d’Or at Cannes, has begun principal photography on his upcoming film “Turtle’s Gaze on Spying Stars.”

One of the film’s producers is Indian Nila Madhab Panda, with whom Jayasundara collaborated to produce. “Sad Letters from an Imaginary Woman” by Nidhi Saxena which will have its world premiere this week in the Busan International Film Festival.

“The Turtle’s Eye on Spy Stars” is currently filming in and around the downtown hills. Sri Lanka. It is set in a future devastated by a mysterious pandemic caused by humanity’s overdependence on technology. The protagonist is a Sri Lankan refugee who returns to the country and is forcibly admitted to a valley resort converted into an isolation center. Once there, memories of his past in Sri Lanka haunt him, but instead of producing fear, as is the installation’s intention, the experience has the opposite effect. Develop love and compassion by meeting strangers.

The film is produced by Panda, Vincent Wang and Fred Bellaiche’s Paris-based House on Fire (“Whether the Weather is Fine”) and Sri Lanka’s Film Council Productions (“Dark in the White Light”), with French Le Studio Orlando (“Plan 75”) as co-producer. It is supported by Rotterdam Hubert Bals Fund + Europe, the CNC – Aide aux CInemas du Monde fund from France and the Taiwan International Co-financing Program of the Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA).

Since her Camera d’Or-winning debut, Jayasundara’s films, including “Between Two Worlds” (2009), “Mushrooms” (2011), “Dark in the White Light” (2015) and the anthology film “Her. Him. The Other” (2018), have traveled to top-level festivals.

Panda, known for his climate change films, said: “The future is here. It is magical to be on the set of Vimukthi and witness its poetic storytelling unfold. “I was drawn to collaborate with his latest project because of its mystical themes of humans versus nature, the themes closest to me, and this is the type of cinema I want to be a part of and the world I want to see.”