I am a melting pot: a hybrid of Sri Lankan, Swedish, French, Egyptian and American cultures. A resident at various times of New York, Sudan, France, Switzerland, Jerusalem, and California. I was, and am, someone who lacks a fundamental component of life: roots. My feeling of being different stems from these realities. This feeling germinated into a form of isolationism that I grew accustomed too. Solitude and I made a pact. Solitude led me astray from the realities of the world and allowed me to fulfill my part of the pact: to delve deep into my imagination and the world of fantasy. It wasn’t because I couldn’t see the world, but because the world wasn’t enough for me to see. There was more to it and it came from within. Still, strict isolationism would mean that all of the concepts, possibilities and new constructions that I had developed inside me would only be available to myself. That wasn’t enough. I wanted to give them life and share them with the world outside. I needed to express myself, my ideas, my experiences, and my thoughts. All that I had formed in my world of imagination were to be delivered to others too. I just had to give it a voice. A voice that was developed by three integral experiences of my life — effectively shaping the fundamental cores of what I want my work to express: imagination, emotion, and knowledge. Together, they provided me an outlet for everything — film.

    

It started with Lord of the Rings. When I was seven, my uncle gave me the entire Lord of the Rings Trilogy to watch. As lengthy as they were, there wasn’t a single moment that did not captivate me. I had witnessed another mind filled with conceptions and ideas that surpassed the relativity of reality and explored the power of the human imagination. A man had built an entire world on his own, crafted it, and molded it until his art expressed his core. Then, he allowed the world to join in on his adventure. I thank Peter Jackson to this day for introducing me to the world of J.R.R Tolkien. This created my thirst for the unlocking of my own imagination. It made me realize the boundless capacity of film — the only limit was the one you placed on yourself. My voice had to pertain to that limitlessness — to defy what had been done in order to go further. It was that unbounded quality that provided the setting to my voice. 

    

It continued with my family’s adventure on the Prince’s Island near Turkey when I was 10. We sat in a restaurant by the shore, minding our own business, enjoying the view as everyone else tends to do. A young woman came to our table, and without a word began placing down pieces of jewelry in an attempt to fight her poverty. We tried speaking to her, but she could only respond in sign language — she was deaf. My parents kindly declined, and without a word, she smiled at us politely and moved away. Something in me burst. I felt this intangible amount of empathy swarm through my thoughts. It was as if I could feel what she felt. I burst into tears, ran after her, and offered to buy whatever I could. But that feeling was still there, and has been ever since. This created my thirst for understanding the power of emotion. Emotion is what ties us to the people around us, and more importantly, it’s what allows us to understand them too. It is undoubtedly part of the human experience — something that powers our every action. It was the transcending power of emotion that gave substance to my voice. 

  

Lastly was a conversation I had with my late grandmother when I was eleven. My grandmother, when it came to the histories of religion, was encyclopedic. We started the discussion with Adam and Eve. It was a tale that my mind simply could not wrap around, no matter how hard I tried. I was enamored by the ideas of evolution and Darwinian thought, but I couldn’t reject the idea of spirituality and God. I remember telling my grandmother, nervously, that maybe the story of Adam and Eve was more of a guideline than reality. She uttered two words: “Of course”. In a sense, that was the world giving me the permission to think freely. A woman with such religious depth had defied the expectations of her beliefs...and I could too. Suddenly, I felt the borders of my mind expand exponentially until there were no borders at all. This created my thirst for knowledge into what could be – a quest for a deeper understanding. All of the ideas in my head suddenly felt like they deserved to be shown. I couldn't restrict myself to the thoughts that had already been formed by the people of this world — my voice had to be by encyclopedia to the unknown. Thus, knowledge became the goal of my voice. 

 

No art has ever touched me like film. It gives me the purest form of expression — to directly show the audience whatever I want. It allows me to express myself on a plane in which I can encompass all of the experiences that have guided me. It allows me to share with the world the beauty I see in imagination, emotion, and knowledge. It allows me to give everything I have in this life to others, so that maybe they too can be inspired to do the same. But most importantly, it allows me to use my voice. This is my artistic goal, because in truth I do have a home. A home that is more suitable for me than any other. I want others to have that home too, because I want the world to feel the vastness, intensity, and desires of this place as I do. My home is film – the reality I create and share with the world.