Moscow film festival features Arnestad's Black Tiger documentary

[TamilNet, Friday, 20 June 2008, 04:45 GMT]
Norwegian Director Beate Arnestad's documentary on Black Tigers, "My daughter the terrorist," is to be featured in the Moscow International Film Festival to be held between 19th and 26th of June. The documentary, produced after Tamil Tigers for the first time allowed a foreign film team to "hand-pick, follow, interview and dig deep" into the lives and faiths of two female Black Tigers, was premiered in Oslo in March, was featured in the North Carolina, US film festival, and also in Paris.

Morten Dae, the producer of the award winning documentary received death threats after the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) failed in blocking the organisers from screening the film at the Full Frame Documentary Festival, in Durham in the United States, according to a report in Dagsavisen, a Norwegian daily.

The documentary is scheduled to be screened on the 23rd June at 19:30 at the Multiplex Cinema October, Moscow, as part of the "Free thought: Documentary Cinema Program," according to the festival website.

Beate Arnestad, the director of the 58 minutes long documentary film, follows two young, Catholic females, with the nom de guerre 'Dharsika' and 'Puhalchudar', who have been LTTE fighters since their teens and have become part of LTTE's elite force, the Black Tigers.

"For seven years they have been eating, sleeping, training and fighting side by side. They can survive for weeks in the jungle without supplies. They don’t know exactly how many enemies they’ve killed in ordinary battle. Their only source of information is what the guerilla allows them to know, and sincerely believe that their great leader would never order them to bomb civilians," a description of the documentary on the festival website said.

The jury of the Freedom of Expression Foundation (Fritt Ord) in Norway, which identified the documentary as one of eight film projects qualified for production support in 2004, had selected the film with the view that it would serve as a platform for further debate.

Chronology:


External Links:

FFFEST:		U.S. film festival: My Daughter the Terrorist
FIFDH:		Paris film festival: Ma fille la terroriste
Dagsavisen:		Produsent truet på livet
Russia:		Moscow Film Festival: My Daughter Terrorist // Min datter terroristen
US:		Women Make Movies: US Distributor