Machan

This film was very enjoyable to watch. Captures local culture very well.

This is a truly excellent Sri Lankan movie which we have not seen for ages in this Island. The subtle way the director has used the humor superbly depicts poverty and people's continuous struggle for living in the capital city.

The dialogs are excellent with superb directing and full credit should go to the Italian director, Uberto Pasolini for his wonderful effort to make a world class Sri Lankan movie. He has been able to grasp the authenticity of Colombo life through the camera with wonderful script writing of Ruwanthi De Chikera.

The selection of the cast and their performance is also superb with not so popular names in cinema like Dharmapriya Dias, Gihan De Chikera and can go on with many other names. Everything else in this movie is excellent including music, art direction, camera etc.

It is rather unfortunate that this film did not get more attention among the viewers in this country perhaps because of the less media publicity given to this compared to some other contemporary movies.

Anyway, this movie stands at the top among all other contemporary local movies & once again well done everyone who contributed to this superb effort.

My vote is 10 out of 10, since we have not seen such high quality Sri Lankan movies before.

I noticed almost all the comments on the movie come from Sri Lanka. I can understand how much this movie has been loved in his own country. Cause the story, the interpreters, everything involved in the movie belongs to Sri Lanka. But after the movie is over, editing and post production done, especially after you watch it and the lights turn on, this "Machan" belongs to the world, to everyone: it's a true story, and it's the truth about sad and unfair differences in the world, about the cruelty and necessity of a lot of people (men, women, husbands, wives, sons and daughters, father and mothers) to emigrate to survive and to help their families, about the cruelty and stupidity of a lot of European laws about immigration, about the surviving instinct all the men have, about life's meaning, in general, if we can all admit life is "the" right for everybody, and not only life\survive, but life\pursuit for happiness (just to use another Italian director\world citizen's -G. Muccino- words). And the movie reaches this big and high target using humor and levity. The hardest way. I want to thank personally Pasolini for the richness watching this movie gave me. To finish it costed only 2 euros millions. Imagine... and compare with all the expensive garbage we're forced to watch from the industry...just to make them richer, and produce more expensive garbage. I really hope this movie will be loved. It deserves it.

The trade of cinema revolves around its commercial as well as artistic aspects.This is the reason why most of the filmmakers try to achieve both artistic as well as commercial success.Machan is a film which has managed to taste both kinds of joys as it is a true entertaining film directed by Uberto Pasolini who produced "The Full Monty" which revived the fortunes of the almost dead British film industry in 1997. Humanity is evident in full force in Machan as it is one of those rare films in which tears of happiness and laughter of wisdom will flow at the same time.In Machan,Uberto Pasolini depicts a serious subject in a light manner to provide an answer to the often repeated question :why do poor people become desperate to go abroad to make money ? This is shown through a very tragic depiction of despicable poverty.Sri Lankan crew's participation makes the whole film appear a genuine exercise in realist cinema as it is based on a true story which happened in 2004.Film critic Lalit Rao saw this film at 13th IFFK 2008 in Kerala and spoke to Italian producer director Uberto Pasolini about his kind of cinema.This interview can be found on cinema-poet website.

This is one of the greatest movies I have ever watched. It is real and it is brave. I really liked the way it pictured the sorrowful helpless lives of Sri Lankan poverty and how they struggle to stand up on their own. No exaggeration at all and amazingly realistic. I think Sri Lankan film industry needs some movies like this, which are closer to the reality. Even though the director is Italian (and I honor him for making such a good movie out of our talented artists), our Sri Lankan artists have done a great justice to the movie. First of all I must say that the cast is saturated. You can expect more for a real wholesome cast for a picture. Even Irangani Serasinghe does a few seconds role; she creates a wonderful image of an Aunt Maggie (Iim not going to spoil it for you here) Everyone is contributing with a great performance, so the cast can be easily given a 10/10. Especially Darmapriya Dias has done an outstanding job. He has really proved that he is a very talented young artist, emerged through the stage plays.

I will rate this movie as 9/10(that's to be fair I guess) Really hope to see more movies like this in the future.