Deepa Mehta's Funny Boy has already gained quite the reputation and has been selected as Canada's entry to the Oscars next year.
The trailer for the film gives us an insight into the reasons. Charming, endearing, but with layers of complex and complicated emotions, the trailer looks like a good introduction to the story.
The trailer begins with the sight of an aunt teaching her young nephew, Arjun Selvarathnam aka Arjie (Arush Nand as child, Brandon Ingram as an adult), that he should never let others dim the 'diva' in him.
The trailer has no qualms jumping into the search for identity of the young boy. Bullied by friends and disliked by his own father, Arjie struggles to understand himself. His only support seems to be his aunt, who is accepting of him.
Yet, the aunt has to struggle with another form of identity — national. The theme of identity, love and conflict fits in with Deepa Mehta's previous works, in particular her trilogy Fire (1996), 1947 Earth (1999) and Water (2005).
Set in Sri Lanka, the story by Shyam Selvadurai explores the coming of age of a boy during the civil war that wracked the island country. The cast includes Arush Nand, Brandon Ingram, Nimmi Harasgama, Ali Kazmi, Agam Darshi, Seema Biswas and Shivantha Wijesinha.
The trailer builds up with the endearing camaraderie between aunt and son punctuated by the bullies in his childhood, school, and later the massive Tamil-Sinhalese conflict that forms the backdrop for Arjun Selvarathnam's life.
The screenplay for the film has been written jointly by Selvadurai and Mehta. The film is being distributed by Ava DuVernay's Array Releasing and has been picked up by Netflix for a premiere in the US, the UK, Australia and New Zealand on 10 December.