“I didn’t make it like it was my first film. I made it like it was my last.”
Lawrence Valin sat down with Tamil Guardian, returning from the Toronto International Film Festival having sold out two screenings of his debut feature film ‘Little Jaffna’. The groundbreaking film was also selected to be screened at the Zurich Film Festival and chosen as a closing film at the Venice International Film Festival.
“I didn’t make it like it was my first film. I made it like it was my last.”
Lawrence Valin sat down with Tamil Guardian, returning from the Toronto International Film Festival having sold out two screenings of his debut feature film ‘Little Jaffna’. The groundbreaking film was also selected to be screened at the Zurich Film Festival and chosen as a closing film at the Venice International Film Festival.
‘Little Jaffna’ is a police drama that explores identity - a concept which people of every diaspora reckon with. Despite crossing an ocean from where he grew up, Valin was surprised at how he and his debut film were received in Toronto, a city with a substantial Eelam Tamil diaspora. “It was a feeling that I had never felt before; I was, like, at home.”
The movie, following an undercover Tamil police officer infiltrating a French Tamil gang in Paris, was warmly received by festival-goers in Canada, who responded resoundingly to the question “Are there any Tamil [people] in this room?”
“I think it’s the language," he says noting the integration the Tamil population that had settled in English-speaking countries had achieved. "In Toronto, it’s English… In France, it’s different. When you come from Sri Lanka, it’s very difficult… Tamil people are still in the shadows.”
The film follows a French police officer called Michael (played by Valin himself) as he infiltrates a violent Tamil gang, with LTTE affiliations. The two subjects Valin wished to discuss in ‘Little Jaffna’ were dealing with a ‘double culture’ and the looming presence of the Tamil liberation struggle and Sri Lanka's genocide throughout his life. “How do I [talk] about a war that since I was little, I’d only heard about it..? We are still dealing with [its] echo.”
The film covers a sensitive subject, and Valin discussed the issues he had to reckon with before going forth with the film. Initially, there was the issue of representation of a community. Gangster films have always had a vocal pushback on how minority groups are depicted and Valin did not want to fall into the same old tropes. “The Tamil community in France said ‘you don’t have to show people like this.’”
“I don’t care for the accept[ance] of the Tamil community or the French community,” Valin continues. All that matters to Valin is to be certain of what he wants to get across. However, he does add that his intention in making the film was not to be a tour guide for Sri Lanka. Instead, he wanted to depict some of the realities that Tamils faced growing up in Paris, having fled persecution in Sri Lanka.
He wrestled with the issue of not coming across as didactic or as a documentarian, and this is where he admits to employing some artistic license throughout the film. For example, a striking visual which I wished to address was preempted by Valin, as he showed Tamil gang members lined up on pavements outside shops in the middle of the day, surveilling the streets or just passing time on the corners. “Tamil people are living in that area [of Paris] playing carrom board… this is [from] my head. It is not reality. This is… fiction.”
The most natural genre to explore these themes was through the ‘deep cover agent’ trope. “An ‘infiltration’ is the best way for me to go deeper into a community and discover how it works.”
Radhika Sarathkumar plays Michael’s Ammamma and Vela Ramamoorthy plays the role of Ayya, the leader of the gang. The rest of the cast are made up of newcomers, non-actors and amateurs. “Most of the youngsters were non-professional… It was their first time. Radhika-madam accepting the project… the community thought, 'Okay, this is a serious thing. It’s Chiththi.'”
Valin spoke of the professionalism of Radhika during the shoot, how quickly and easily she would complete her shoots, perfecting her performance in her first attempt. “The story was very important for her. She said she was waiting for a story like [this] - a film dealing with the Tamil Eelam story.”
The film's timeline is somewhat loose but largely centres around the end of the armed conflict and the 2009 Mullivaikkal genocide. When questioned why Valin chose this particular era, he responded, “So many… civilian people were dying in this period."
"My mother was speaking with my auntie in Sri Lanka… she said, ‘this morning, there were two heads in front of the garden.’ After that she said, ‘this afternoon, we [ate] parippu and rice.’ How could she [speak] so naturally about this?”
In comparison, he recalls the French news and media treated the genocide as a rising statistic and a footnote - a distant disturbance which did not require more than half a minute of coverage. “I'll talk about things that maybe someone who doesn’t know [of] the war in Sri Lanka, at the end of the film they will Google [it],” he adds.
Valin explained the need for balance between reality and fiction in his work and keep the viewer’s intrigue enough to find out more. Despite being “too far” from the war, Lawrence wishes to shine a light on the atrocities that continue to occur. “Even now, the Tamil people are still struggling… It is a duty: if you don’t talk about it, you forget it.”
“In Toronto, there were younger people… who didn’t have a clue about the war,” Valin lamented. The parents of these younger Tamils thanked Valin for his film, for acting as an initial foothold to begin the conversation of the war with their children. In the final scenes of the film, the credits speak about the genocide and the ongoing suffering that Tamils continue to face.
“Our story is too complicated,” he adds. Through his film, he hopes to unpick some of it.
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Five works of art that have inspired Lawrence Valin.
The works of Martin Scorsese - With Italian American people, he’s done the same thing. In his period, Italian Americans were cool. A minority living in a country where they’re not accepted, and how they have their own troubles.
The works of Quentin Tarantino - Tarantino’s work is crazy. He [does] what he wants to do. The first time I saw ‘Kill Bill,’ I thought… he doesn’t have any boundaries. Tarantino brings the same feeling as Tamil films for me.
The works of Vijay - He has his own way to bring people together. Even if the film is not good, Vijay fans don’t say it’s not good. He’s a man of the people. When I was younger I watched ‘Ghilli’ like 37 times.
Padaiyappa - One of my favourite films as a youngster.
The works of Denzel Washington - What he has done for the Black community is create vocations for other Black men in the next generation.
