Boodee Keerthisena

The young Sri Lankan filmmaker Boodee Keerthisena’s idol and mentor is the great John Cassavetes, who made those unique improvisational, gritty, "cinema-verite" style films on a shoestring budget with friends and borrowed equipment. Boodee makes his films in a similar, non-commercial way, but with his own unique style. With one successful movie The Veils of Maya (1995) and after a long film making adventure on the road in Sri Lanka and Italy, he has just completed his second feature film Mille Soya (Buongiorno Italia), about young South Asians illegally and dangerously crossing European borders in search of a better life.