Envy the Monster

A short procession of colorful material and a mysterious woman lit by the sun. A paean to Kenneth Anger.

In a small and remote hamlet in Southern Sri Lanka, a little girl develops a curious friendship with a spirit who lives in an abandoned house. This film was shot in my mother's village in Southern Sri Lanka—shortly after the civil war in 2010. Collaboratively developed with members of my family there, a narrative was improvised around an investigation into my mother's interactions with spirits in the community during her childhood. Landing somewhere between horror fiction and “spectral” ethnography, the film describes a population reeling from devastations of the past, where distinctions between the living and the dead are thinning, and foreign influences loom over Sri Lanka’s commercial, economic, and media infrastructure.

This footage was shot shortly after the civil war in Sri Lanka on the occasion of my mother’s long-delayed reunion with Kamala, the aunt she lived with as a child. Kamala was living a life of solitude at this point and has now since passed away—this film is dedicated to her.

A Tamil woman loses her son to a supernatural entity plaguing her community in a war torn village in Northern Sri Lanka and intertwining with her journey are real-life testimonies with women whose family members vanished at the hands of military forces during the civil war.