Great cinematographic specimen despite casting criticism

Assistant Art Director Gayan Madushanka on the making of Funny Boy

By Tharishi Hewavithanagamage

Directed by the renowned and Oscar-nominated filmmaker Deepa Mehta, the full length feature film ‘Funny Boy’ is based on novelist Shyam Selvadurai’s gay coming of age novel of the same name, that became a critical and sensational story, when it was first published in Canada in 1994. The novel was praised as a pioneering story, speaking about politics, ‘queerness’ and South Asian history. Shyam’s account of being both a migrant and a queer outsider in his own culture made the tale a powerful and layered story of selfhood, and also won Shyam the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction and the Books in Canada First Novel Award. Mehta is a recipient of the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement, Canada’s highest honour in the performing arts.