Film Review for Paris in July - Little Jaffna

 I may have strayed a little from my ambitions list.... but I couldn't find Le Havre on my free streaming service, SBS.  I found Little Jaffna instead. 

Have you ever been to Sri Lanka? or have you heard things about the Tamil Tigers insurgency?  This occured during my lifetime, and I still dont fully comprehend it. 

This film, directed by the leading actor, is a powerful story of the challenges for displaced Sri Lankans in Paris. Little Jaffna being the suburbs in Paris where the Sri Lankans found refuge and community together. 

During the insurgency, 1983 - 2009, the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, sustained their military capabilities through extensive funding from a global Tamil diaspora network, alongside extortion and illicit trafficking. The story told in this film is about the Killi'z gang, who is portrayed as a powerful and dangerous syndicate that extorts money from local Sri Lankan Tamil businesses to finance covert operations and resistance movements. 

The film evokes the gang culture, aspects of the homeland culture, and also a hope for assimilation in the new homeland. 

I did a quick search and found there are nearly 4 million Sri Lankan Tamils globally, nearly 3 million reside in Sri Lanka now, and another 1.2 million living in the diaspora. Major populations abide in Canada, India, Australia, the UK, France and Germany. 

I travelled to Sri Lanka in 2019, and thoroughly loved the people, the food and the incredibly diverse culture and history. 

While Paris in July feels like an invitation to explore all the aspects of Paris & France we love, this film brought to light for me, that immigrants who ended up in Paris, or choose Paris for their dreams, still struggle to make their dreams come true while the past holds them connected.  However, in the end, the young Tamil/ French Police Officer, graduates with his proud Tamil grandmother in the room....  one chapter closes, as his new life begins.