My Daughter the Terrorist
Like many Sri Lankan families, Dharsika’s father died in the war. She stayed with the family just long enough to bury her father, then disappeared into the guerilla’s hands.
Dharsika and Puhalchudar have a close friendship. For seven years they have been eating, sleeping, training and fighting side by side. They belong to the last batch of the Black Tigers, and they don’t know exactly how many enemies they’ve killed in ordinary battles. Now they are equipped for the last mission: strapping claymore mine to their bodies, able to blow themselves and everything within 100 feet into pieces. They believe that their great leader would never order them to bomb civilians. The grisly images of the bombing of Colombo’s very own World Trade Center is a somber counterpoint to this.
Alongside the wailing mothers clutching the graves of their lost ones, Dharsika’s mother places her flowers on the grave of an unknown soldier, and walks away.
Directors
Beate Arnestad
Beate Arnestad worked for many years and in many different positions at Norwegian broadcaster NRK, mainly in the divisions of culture and entertainment. Her first documentary was “Where the waves sing” (2002), tracing the life of a former painter and governor in the forgotten Danish-Norwegian colony Tranquebar in India.
While living in Sri Lanka from 2003 to 2006, she started exploring the concept of women in war, which turned into the film “My daughter the terrorist.” She is currently starting work on a new documentary, this time based on recent African history.