Interdisciplinary writer, artist, researcher and policy analyst Amita Arudpragasam sat down with Tamil Guardian ahead of the screening of her documentary ‘Thayakam’. The film dissects the impact of the climate crisis in the North and North West of the island.
Can you tell us a little bit about Thayakam?
Thayakam is a character-led documentary which follows a disillusioned environmentalist as he moves across the northern coast of Sri Lanka, which is situated in a dry zone - it's poorly industrialized. Edison Marynathan is from Mannar district and he's trying to understand the many types of environmental and climate crises that are plaguing his region. The region is also a site of ongoing ethnic conflict. So, the film is set at the intersections of ongoing ethnic conflict and evolving climate and environmental crisis.
Why did you decide to make Thayakam?
The film was motivated by research. In June 2018, the World Bank published a report which identified the north and northwestern provinces as climate hotspots, and within that, four districts - Jaffna, Mannar, Puttalam, and Kilinochchi were identified as… climate vulnerable regions; these are all areas that are under-resourced, war-impacted, and that face ongoing structural and systemic racism; so, they were regions I was interested in understanding further… Even prior to making this film, I had been researching the political and economic transitions in the northern region, and the film was motivated by this new information. Also, because of structural racism and because of state oppression, there is this sense that these are regions that get left behind in terms of development, or in which development happens in different ways.
As an example, in August 2025, we had the Energy Minister Kumara Jayakody calling Mannar ‘stale land’. He said that there were no birds anywhere from Mannar all the way to Pooneryn. If you've been to the region, you will know that it's an untrue statement, and it's a very harmful deception in a district that's actually recognised as an important bird and biodiversity area, that contains many protected areas and that is teeming with wildlife and bird life as well… the conflation of the climate crisis, economic development that isn't sensitive to the region, and the knowledge that these regions are also, in many cases, poor - for example, in Mannar's case - but also… impacted by state neglect, motivated me to make the film.
Thayakam takes a holistic view on the climate crisis, weaving the psychological, sociological, political, literary, and ecological together. Did you go into the project with this viewpoint, or did it evolve as you made the film?
My practice is interdisciplinary. I studied public policy, but my first degree was literature… I feel that it is important to mix what we know from evidence-based research with the lived experiences of communities, but that's not to say that every interview or every song that appeared in the film was pre-planned. Edison’s political journey was unplanned and obviously, so were the protests that happened in Mannar. There was so much that happened spontaneously… That's… how it is when you're shooting documentaries… There were a lot of spontaneous encounters and a lot of the decision-making about which songs should be amplified, whose voices should be included and whose should be excluded from the documentary happened in the editing process. So, I guess to answer your question, a mix of both.
You spoke about the research that instigated the making of the film, but was there any research following the initial statements and reports that you saw that were carried out after you started the project?
So the project is actually… broader than just a documentary. It includes research on the climate crisis… that translated into a few long form essays. It also included a photo exhibition; so we were documenting the northern and northwestern provinces in multiple ways.
The research included multiple interviews - many of which didn't actually make it into the film - with experts and… climate scientists and different types of individuals working in different occupations impacted by the climate crisis.
After the… film ended, I [have]…continued to work on this… arm of research. So my ongoing research… was contributed to by the research done for the film, but it extends beyond that.
Were there any unexpected restrictions that you faced while making the film?
Yeah, 100%. Mannar is a region with an extremely high military footprint, and there were multiple encounters with the state. In a way… it was expected. We expected to encounter the military, the navy at different points. I think sometimes the callousness with which our team was… treated was not expected, and the overtness of the… racism that we experienced was not expected.
In the distribution phase as well, I found that there were a lot of people in the south who were taken aback by the use of the word ‘thayakam’ for the film title because of its political resonances… That's notwithstanding that there is… a nationally circulated newspaper called Mawbima, which is the equivalent in Sinhalese of ‘thayakam’. But there were reactions that I wasn't expecting, even from… progressive activists, I guess, in the south. So, that was a little bit unexpected.
Aside from that… there's always the random encounter. For example, I was bitten by a dog during shooting one day, and you don't plan for that, right? But yeah, there were certainly unexpected restrictions and interactions that we had, and I'm glad that we made it through those to make the final documentary.
The phrase "politics is a sewerage" comes up a few times in the film. What are your thoughts on the phrase?
I probably wouldn't describe politics [as] sewerage in the same way that… the protagonist did, but I think it was raw and… a representation of his frustration with the political system that just wasn't or hasn't been serving his community for the longest period of time. I took it as that, and that's why… it was important to leave it in the film. I mentioned that… I was interested in the political transitions that were happening in the north prior to shooting, and some of that was also the fact that Tamils in the north and east, which traditionally voted en bloc, for example, for parties like the Tamil National Alliance - which is a grouping of Tamil nationalist parties founded in 2001 - were actually changing their… voting patterns, and I was interested in the kind of dynamics that were contributing to that - trying to investigate whether it was patronage systems that were new to the north that were impacting voting patterns, or whether it was individuals who were not able to migrate overseas, who were left behind, that were finding themselves somehow left out of mainstream political discourse.
And I think the film is actually, in many ways, a response to that. It's an exploration… of these political and demographic transitions as well. And in a way, Edison Marynathan's journey and his… attempt to become a parliamentarian - it really embodies that broader transition we see in the north. When he ran for parliament, he did so alongside many other independent candidates who were frustrated with the… political system. The film was… an attempt to understand what was happening and what discourses were… void that needed filling, whether through art or this new influx of independent parliamentarians.
In the film, state institutions fail farmers on land, irrigation, and training, and that leaves them unable to respond to the climate crisis. Did you see this as a deliberate repression rather than a neglect? And how did you show it on screen?
There are several state failures that are depicted in the film. So, for example, when M. S. Miranda - [who] was a retired fisheries official - talks about the lack of equipment and training, the lack of data collection devices: that's a government failure, right?
But then you also have the agricultural bureaucrats who are talking about language barriers. The fact that there are trainings that are conducted for their staff that they don't have access to because they don't speak Sinhalese… When Edison is also talking about the lack of interest or the apathy of government servants in issues of public concern; that's another form of state failure that… might have its origins in… poor public service recruitment or whatnot.
So there are multiple instances where state institutions fail - including at the end where Edison loses faith in law and order to protect him when he is threatened violently.
Some of these are failures also faced in the South. It’s not always easy to tease apart what failures of governance… are experienced across the country, for example, like I said, poor recruitment systems in the public service — and which of these issues are a result of deliberate state oppression / racism. In other instances it’s very clear. For example, the lack of a good language policy has animated Tamil politics for decades, and so the inability of the state to actually implement good language training, or… to have these policies in place and implemented in a way that is meaningful for Tamil-speaking communities, I think that speaks to structural and systemic racism. The same can be said about the failure to implement devolution or address the national question, right? That’s also, again… an ask that has been part of Tamil politics for a long time, unfulfilled because of chauvinism.
Why did you choose Tholvi Nilayenna as the film's musical thread?
I think that was one of the most meaningful interactions we had during the shooting of the film. Mr. S. A. Anthony, who is a cuttlefish fisherman, spontaneously began to sing to us when the protagonist Edison was talking to him, and none of us were expecting it… Later, during the editing process, while researching around the song, we found that - I think from reading a Tamil Guardian article actually - Tholvi Nilayenna famously sung by PB Srinivas, was sung… when the IPKF was in Sri Lanka, and when the LTTE was at a low point in in the militant movement.
It's a song about… resilience - regardless of the circumstances that you're facing and our team found it to be very appropriate for the themes of this film and in the context of the climate crisis and Tamil politics… We're talking about failures and loss and there's no shortage of that in the history of Tamil politics in this country.
Edison too… goes through his own journey where he actually doesn't really win but he still manages to find a way to stand up the next day and go out to a protest. I think for us that really shows… that the film is really about… ‘making friends with defeat’ - as Arundhati Roy might say - and S. A. Anthony just very eloquently in that one song, produced a line that was relevant for almost every aspect of the film.
Five works of art that have recently influenced Amita Arudpragasam.
1. The Hunt for Veerappan (dir. Selvamani Selvaraj) 2. Earth Transformed (written by Peter Frankopan) 3. Mother Mary Comes to Me (written by Arundhati Roy) 4. The works of Perumal Murugan 5. The works of Ambai
Thayakam is being screened at Phoenix Cinema London in collaboration with Tamil Guardian on October 16th 2026.
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