Republic of Amnesia is a beautiful, sensitive and at times visceral account of Sri Lanka’s 2022 Gen-Z uprising, the Aragalaya. Its achievement lies not only in documenting a spectacular political event, but in capturing how that moment was lived through fear, humour, vulnerability, courage and the sudden discovery of collective power. The film shows that the struggle was not simply against a government, but also against forgetting. Rather than offering a triumphant narrative of victory or a cynical account of failure, it asks what remains after a moment of political rupture and preserves the clarity of that moment against forgetting.

Rajesh Venugopal, Associate Professor, London School of Economics