How the Sri Lankan civil war made its way into a French film about an undercover cop

In 2009, when the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam insurgency in Sri Lanka came to a brutal end, Lawrence Valin was 20 years old and far away from the land of his origin. The actor of Sri Lankan Tamil heritage was born and raised in France. Yet, when it came to making his first film, it was duality – of language, colour, culture, identity – that inspired Valin.

Little Jaffna explores its lead character’s divided loyalties through the prism of a crime thriller. Valin’s film. which is in both French and Tamil, is set in 2008 in the titular neighborhood in Paris inhabited by the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora.

Valin plays Michael Beaulieu, a Tamil-origin police officer who infiltrates a criminal gang called Killiz that provides funds to the LTTE. Michael is torn between professional duty and identification with outliers who have created a home away from home for themselves. Michael wonders whether the gang’s trafficking of war-scarred refugees is a righteous form of assistance to a community that cannot enter France through legal means.

Colourful, kinetic and thoughtful, and with a pulsating score, Little Jaffna was shown at the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival in October. The movie will be released commercially in France and the United Kingdom over the next few months.

Apart from Valin, Little Jaffna stars Indian actors Vela Ramamoorthy and Radikaa Sarathkumar in key roles. Ramamoorthy plays Ayya, the fearsome Killiz boss, while Sarathkumar – whose mother is of Sri Lankan Tamil heritage – plays Michael’s grandmother. The cast includes first-time actor Puviraj Raveendran as Puvi, a charismatic gang member who befriends Michael.

Valin’s filmmaking journey addresses only not his past but also his professional experience. He encountered stereotyping when he sought acting roles. He turned director in 2018 with a short film, also titled Little Jaffna. His feature of the same name is autobiographical while also being honest to his experience as a French citizen, the 35-year-old filmmaker told Scroll. Here are edited excerpts from the interview.

What inspired Little Jaffna, and how much of you is present in Michael?

There were two things I wanted to talk about – the conflict in Sri Lanka, and the identity crisis. Ninety per cent is my journey, it’s about growing up with my grandma, grappling with my identity.

When I was growing up, the war was on, but no one outside [the community] knew or cared about the conflict. I didn’t make the film just for the Tamil community, but also for the others. Because if others watch the film, the Tamil community will be able to watch the film too.

The film is also for the next generation. Many mothers come to me and say that they don’t know how to talk about the war to their children. The film is like a bridge for us to discuss the war and what happened in Sri Lanka and where we come from.

How has your Tamil identity and your relationship with Sri Lanka evolved over the years?

My mother is from Trincomalee and my father from Jaffna. They met in Libya and they went from country to country before they came to France. My maternal grandmother is Sinhalese.

I grew up far from the politics of Sri Lanka. I wasn’t as involved with the issue, like my parents. Even when the war was ending, I was far away from it. When I went to Sri Lanka in 2008 and later in 2019, I was an outsider, a tourist. I was like a white person there.

But the people looked like me. That connection was very important – it was a part of my story, rather than just the story of my parents.

When I was shooting in Switzerland for the film, I met a refugee who had grown up in Sri Lanka. He said that if war ever broke out again, he would go back there with his child to fight. I said that I would never do that. He told me, you don’t know the feeling of losing your land. I was very moved by that.

Why did you choose to explore cultural identity through the framework of a crime thriller?

People who are used to auteur cinema will criticise the film and say that I should have gone deeper. But I wanted people to be entertained. I didn’t want to make something serious.

In France, the older generation that escaped the war preferred not to be visible. When some of them saw the film, they told me I was portraying them as gangsters. This is just a representation. If you’re not okay with that, I understand. Maybe it’s too heavy to talk about the war. But at the same time, no one talks about this war, and if we don’t, we forget about it.

I made Little Jaffna not like my debut film, but my last film. Even if I don’t make anything else, it is okay. If every Tamil person has a DVD of a film that talks about them, that’s good enough.

Wherever there is Tamil diaspora, there is great interest in the film. I thought only French and Tamil people would be interested, but the feeling of what it means to grow up with a double culture is universal.

An interesting feature of Michael is that he has vitiligo on his face.

I too have vitiligo, not on my face but my back. I put white streaks on my face because I wanted to convey, without putting in words, what it meant to have brownness mixed with whiteness.

It’s funny – people think that I have vitiligo in real life and that I cover my face with make-up. Then there were people with vitiligo who have thanked me said, we are never cast in the main roles but are always in the shadows.

In France, Tamil people are a minority that we don’t know about. They are always shown as immigrants who don’t speak. French. I didn’t feel represented because I grew up in France and I speak French perfectly.

Before Little Jaffna, French director Jacques Audiard made a film about Sri Lankan Tamil refugees navigating the underworld. Audiard’s Dheepan starred the writer Shobasakthi, whose real name is Anthonythasan Jesuthasan. It won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2015. Your short film Little Jaffna too starred Jesuthasan. Why didn’t you cast him in your feature?

Dheepan is the first film about the Tamil community in France. Yet, you don’t have a clue about the Tamil community after watching the film.

I was cast as an extra in the film, but I didn’t want the role. Then the film won the Palme d’Or. I felt that no one in France would do another film about French and Tamil people because Audiard had already done it. Dheepan motivated me to write and direct my own film.

I am not comparing what each of us has done. I don’t want to be that Tamil person who criticises the film just because I wasn’t selected for it. Audiard happens to be one of the greatest French directors around. I love how he works with actors.

Audiard had already trained Anthonythasan in a sense, before I made my own short film with him. When I came up with the feature film, it was very important to separate Audiard’s film from mine.

Anthonythasan was the first person I called to say sorry, I cannot take you in this one because I need to keep the films separate. He’s a great human being, he has a powerful face. But I needed new faces. I didn’t want people to think of Dheepan while watching Little Jaffna.

Tell us about the rest of your cast.

I travelled to India to cast Radikaa Sarathkumar and Vela Ramamoorthy. Radikaa told me she had been waiting for a project like this.

Puviraj Raveendran, who plays Puvi, has never acted before. He walked in one day, and the way he was talking told me that he was the lovely rowdy that I had been looking for.

It was very important for me to have a connection with him. His energy and my energy is different, but we complement each other. Puvi is strong and manly, while Michael has a fragile and introverted side. The equation is like that Disney film The Fox and the Hound – they are friends, but they cannot be together since they are from separate worlds.

Many of the youngsters were acting for the first time. They trusted me since I was in the same boat as them.

Although Michal is a police officer, he begins to view Ayya’s rackets differently when he is on the inside. Although Ayya is a smuggler, he is also helping refugees find safe passage to France.

It was important for me that the film wasn’t black and white. When Michael is done with his mission, he is still a policeman, but he has connected with his journey and his identity. I didn’t want him to choose between being Tamil and French – he is both. How is he going to manage? It’s a process, a journey that he is still a part of.

Little Jaffna isn’t a pro-Tiger or a pro-government film. When you go to the other side, you see that the situation is not so simple. It depends on the point of view.

Besides, you can’t resolve everything in 97 minutes. If people want more, maybe I will make Little Jaffna 2.