The film, which follows six refugees – a schoolboy, a housewife, a young woman with academic ambitions and the community’s first PhD scholar – was selected as a finalist for the December 14 edition of the SHORTS! European Short Film Festival in Oslo, marking the first major international platform for the story of an often‑overlooked community.
All but two of the six subjects arrived on Indian shores by boat, enduring inhumane conditions to escape the brutal killings that have plagued northern Sri Lanka. According to Radhakrishnan, the documentary reflects the broader reality of 89,830 Sri Lankan Tamil refugees in India, of whom roughly 98 percent remain without Indian citizenship, denying them voting rights, formal employment and legal protection.
Radhakrishnan, a senior journalist with nearly four decades of print experience, first visited a refugee camp in 2006 during a cholera outbreak in Tamil Nadu. He says the film grew out of those early reporting trips to camps in Thanjavur, Mannar and Tiruchi, and his belief that “people should speak for themselves” rather than being spoken for by outsiders.
The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) reviewed the documentary for two and a half months and ultimately gave it a “U/A” rating, restricting viewership to audiences over 16. The film deliberately shifts focus from the refugees’ immediate hardships to the systemic denial of citizenship – a stance Radhakrishnan says is “a solvable problem stalled only by the absence of political will in New Delhi.”
Through personal narratives – such as Negha, a scholar striving to study abroad, young Abhinesh, who resigns himself to a future as a carpenter, and AS Vijedharan, the first PhD graduate in political science and public administration from Annamalai University – the documentary seeks to dismantle the perception of refugees as security threats, a stigma that intensified after the 1991 assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Radhakrishnan hopes the festival circuit and outreach to policymakers will spark the political momentum needed to grant these residents full legal status.