We’re delighted to invite you to a UK Premiere screening of thayakam/motherland, followed by a Q&A with the director Amita Arudpragasam. Tickets are available below. About thayakam/motherland (12A) 76m Directed by: Amita Arudpragasam Tamil/English with English subtitles thayakam/motherland is a character-led documentary that follows a disillusioned environmentalist as he moves across Sri Lanka’s arid, poorly industrialised Northern province, trying to understand the many environmental and climate crises plaguing his motherland. In a fragile, war-impacted region—still the site of ongoing ethnic conflict—the environmentalist becomes embroiled in a struggle for life and land. In an era of record-breaking global temperatures and soaring carbon emissions, Sri Lanka consistently ranks among the top ten most climate-vulnerable nations in the world. It was for this soil, and the ability to govern over it, that countless men and women would ?ght and die in a 26-year-long armed struggle. Now that same soil is being threatened by the climate emergency and extractive development. Centred on climate hotspots in the war-impacted North of Sri Lanka, thayakam/motherland is a visual ethnography exploring the relationship between people, land, and climate. About Amita Arudpragasam Amita is an interdisciplinary public policy analyst from Jaffna based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Her work lies at the intersections of economics, politics, gender, and ethnic conflict. She directed and produced thayakam/motherland, a feature documentary on the climate and environmental emergency in the North of Sri Lanka and is writing a series of articles on the same themes as a 2025 Open Society Fellow. Amita completed her BA in English Literature at Princeton University and her MPP at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.