Pradeepan Raveendran’s Soundless Dance dives into the war-torn mind of a Sri Lankan Tamil in Paris Through Soundless Dance, the director asks: Isn’t the pain of a torn country, the pain of separation from family enough? Does one need to manufacture more “drama”? Baradwaj Rangan January 07, 2021 11:27:31 IST Still from Soundless Dance
Pradeepan Raveendran was born in Jaffna, and he now lives in Paris. You might say he identifies with Siva (Patrick Balaraj Yogarajan), the protagonist of his debut feature film,
Soundless Dance (Nisaptha Nadanam).
Siva, too, is an émigré, and before we see him, we see people protesting the Sri Lankan civil war with cries of “recognise autonomy of Tamil Eelam” and “help us to save the Tamils”. A solitary drummer transforms these chants into something like war cries, as the French police attempt to maintain
Express News Service
Pradeepan Raveendran’s Soundless Dance (Nisabda Nadanam) opens with footage of rallies in France from early 2009, Tamils registering their voice against the state’s genocide in Sri Lanka as the civil war lasting almost three decades reaches a point of no return.
The sounds we hear with these visuals blasts and explosions seem to be coming from northern Sri Lanka. Soundless Dance, like its protagonist, exists in multiple personalities, with one leg in each place.
The film immediately cuts to Siva (Patrick Balaraj Yogarajan), already in France but trying to obtain a visa to live legally. His presence in the country might be physical but he is drawing breath for a soul wandering back home when alone, which is often in a foreign country. Pradeepan shows him crossing the streets of Paris alone, walking through the woods lost and sitting by himself in the train. We catch a reflection of Siva on the train’s window, an image of him that is breathing and surv