Film directed by Kannan Arunasalam

Young activists lead Sri Lanka’s 2022 uprising, toppling an authoritarian president — but can fragile hope survive in a country built on forgetting?

Republic of Amnesia (2025) follows the rise and fall of Sri Lanka’s Aragalaya (“The Struggle”) — the youth-led protest movement that forced authoritarian president Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country in 2022. At its heart are young activists like Melani, Buwanaka and Jeana, who organise marches, face arrest, and confront a political system built to endure. As they challenge a powerful dynasty, their struggle raises a deeper question: can fragile hope survive in a country built on forgetting? As the spirit of the Aragalaya ripples across Asia, inspiring youth movements from Bangladesh to Indonesia, the film looks beyond the moment itself. It asks what remains and what is lost when a movement fades, and suggests that the struggle for democracy lies not only in institutions or leaders, but in the stories a society chooses to preserve.

Filmmaker Kannan Arunasalam and South Asia Program Senior Manager Daniel Bass will join for a conversation and Q&A after the screening.

Kannan Arunasalam is a British-Sri Lankan filmmaker working across documentary film and moving-image installation. His work explores memory, political resistance, and the legacies of conflict and colonialism. His installation The Tent (2019) was presented in a solo exhibition at Yorkshire Contemporary. His documentary Sri Lanka’s Rebel Wife (2021) was shortlisted for Best Documentary at the DIG Investigative Film Awards. He recently completed two feature documentaries: Republic of Amnesia (2025, UK/Sri Lanka), examining Sri Lanka’s 2022 Aragalaya protest movement, and Possible Landscapes (2025, US/Trinidad & Tobago), which premiered at the BlackStar Film Festival and explores intergenerational environmental experience.

In Sinhala, Tamil and English with English subtitles. More at republicofamnesia.film.

Come and explore international research from students at the Einaudi Center for International Studies. Our undergraduate Global Scholars will present posters on their international aid projects.

Global Scholars Showcase

Global Scholars will present a showcase of their capstone projects providing public commentary and perspectives on international aid.

Undergraduate global scholars consider the multiple perspectives that shape the global landscape of international aid and the communities impacted. They have partnered with Einaudi Center practitioner in residence Paul Kaiser and faculty mentor Ed Mabaya—expert researchers and practitioners on international development—to design their projects. Applications for the next cohort will open in fall 2026.

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The Einaudi Spring Showcase is hosted by the Einaudi Center for International Studies.

Join SEAP and GETSEA for a simulcast film screening of two short films: Sotong and Against This Messy World.

We will watch the films on the Cornell campus, then join an online discussion with audiences at universities across the US for a Q&A with the filmmakers.

Sotong follows four fierce local drag queens who were part of the 2022 Halloween party raided by the authorities. One of them, Juan, was arrested for ‘a man dressing up as a woman’. Two years later, they revisit on the fallout of that night as they continue to perform underground and nurture the Malaysian drag scene in all its beauty, joy, and pain.

Against This Messy World is a deeply introspective and visually captivating short documentary that delves into the heart and soul of artistic expression in Malaysia. A personal exploration, narrated by Malaysian artists, this documentary takes viewers on an evocative journey to understand the essence and purpose of being an artist in a world marked by chaos and uncertainty and piece together conversations and unfiltered moments in their lives.

Department of History of Art & Visual Studies Findley Lecture Series.

Join us for a talk by Murad Khan Mumtaz, (Associate Professor, Williams College).

This Findley Lecture will take place in the AD White House's Guerlac Room.

Abstract

Islamic art is often misrepresented as an iconophobic tradition. As a result of this assumption, the polyvalence of figural artworks made for Hindustan’s Muslim audiences has remained hidden in plain view. By combining an art historical survey with an analysis of primary Indo-Persian literature, this talk shows how figurative painting was intimately linked to a unique Indo-Muslim religious expression that had a wide circulation across South Asia.

Biography

Murad Khan Mumtaz is an associate professor in the Art Department at Williams College. He examines historical intersections of art, literature and religious expression in South Asia, with a primary focus on Indo-Muslim patronage. By combining art history with textual analysis, his recent book, Faces of God: Images of Devotion in Indo-Muslim Painting (Brill, 2023), examines the cultural contexts within which these Islamicate images of devotion were made and viewed. Murad is also an artist trained in traditional Hindustani painting techniques which he teaches at Williams. His work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions internationally.