Documentary Filmmaker
About
Kannan Arunasalam is a British-Sri Lankan documentary filmmaker whose work explores the long-term impact of conflict through a human rights lens. His practice is immersive, rigorous, and reflective. Kannan’s films have been featured on prominent platforms including Al Jazeera English, the BBC, and The New Yorker. His most recent film, Sri Lanka’s Rebel Wife (2022), was shortlisted for Best Documentary at the DIG Investigative Film Awards. His earlier work, The Tent (2019), was featured in a solo exhibition at Yorkshire Contemporary (formerly The Tetley, Leeds).
Kannan is currently developing two feature documentaries: Possible Landscapes, which explores environmental experience in Trinidad & Tobago, and Republic of Amnesia, which examines Sri Lanka’s unprecedented protest movement. Drawing on extensive experience collaborating with international organisations, media platforms, and academic institutions, Kannan also brings a global and multifaceted perspective to Retold World, which creates impactful documentary films that address today’s most issues.
After graduating with a degree in psychology from the University of Cambridge, Kannan Arunasalam began his career as a defamation and human rights lawyer. At a leading media law firm in London, he worked on high-profile libel, privacy, and copyright cases, providing pre-publication advice to journalists, publishers, and broadcasters. Alongside partners such as David Hooper—one of the UK’s most respected libel lawyers—he defended the right to freedom of expression in an era that laid the groundwork for what are now known as Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs), used by powerful interests to silence media scrutiny.
But Kannan wanted to move beyond working vicariously on media human rights cases—he wanted to tell stories himself.
Kannan transitioned into journalism, beginning with Radio Netherlands Worldwide’s human rights programme before being selected to train with Al Jazeera English’s flagship documentary strand, Witness, under its current Executive Director of Documentaries, Fiona Lawson-Baker. From there, he steadily established himself as a filmmaker, working with major international broadcasters and platforms including The Guardian, The New Yorker, TechCrunch, and AOL Originals.
In 2010, Kannan returned to academia to complete a master’s degree in international human rights law at the University of Oxford, where his dissertation explored the role of new media in conflict. Shortly after, he was invited by Cornell University’s Department of Asian Studies to serve as a visiting professor, teaching a course on media representations of the Sri Lankan conflict.
From 2013 to 2019, Kannan served as a director at Stateless Media, a US-based start-up. Alongside award-winning journalist Peter Savodnik, and Oscar-nominated filmmaker Ed Perkins, he helped reshape the media landscape with the “shortreal”—a 10-minute film format that combined the depth of print journalism with the cinematic power of documentary filmmaking. Their innovative approach was widely praised, with American Journalism Review calling it ‘Pushing the Boundaries of Storytelling Through the Shortreal’ and TechCrunch highlighting how Stateless Media’s work revolutionized online documentaries. Their clients included diverse platforms like AJ+, The New Yorker, The Guardian, Upworthy, Snapchat, Engadget, TechCrunch, AOL Originals, and Condé Nast.
Kannan Arunasalam is an award winning British–Sri Lankan documentary filmmaker. Kannan’s films have screened at international film festivals and art museums, most recently his British solo exhibition at The Tetley, United Kingdom (2019). His work has appeared in Guardian Films, The New Yorker, AOL Originals, and broadcast on BBC and Al Jazeera English.
Kannan read psychology at the University of Cambridge and holds a masters in international human rights law from the University of Oxford focusing on new media and conflict. He was a visiting professor teaching ‘media representations of the Sri Lankan conflict’ at Cornell University’s Department of Asian Studies, and continues to engage students in filmmaking on location with Cornell University’s Architecture Department. Kannan is available to work internationally in these different roles.