SCARS

Vetrichelvi was just 17 years old when she joined the terrorist organization of Tamil Tigers. During decades long civil war in Sri Lanka, she lost one arm and one eye, but also became known as a radical ideologist of the movement and a poet. Now she is determined to find her former comrades and write a book about the untold stories of the female fighters. In a country, where those who speak out very often disappear, Vetrichelvi‘s mission is a dangerous one and a game changer.

Filmed over the course of 4 years, SCARS is a road movie through a postwar country still troubled by conflicts between the two nations and a journey into the past recreated by unique archives and cinematic reconstructions. It‘s a universal story of life after war, of wounds that don’t heal and scars that remain for generations to come. A story told from a female perspective.

The film focuses on Vetrichelvi and her friends, showing the mechanisms that led these otherwise ordinary teenage girls (sometimes as young as 12) to join a terrorist organization and how it affected their lives. They have spent their whole adult life fighting and now, after the lost war, they have no job opportunities, are excluded from society and stigmatized. After meeting one of her former comrades – now with a completely destroyed face, unable to even speak properly – Vetrichelvi breaks down. Soon she starts an organization for handicapped women and tries to move on, forget about the past. But then a much darker truth unravels. SCARS brings us the never told before story of forcibly recruited female fighters and sheds a new and controversial light on the unresolved conflict in Sri Lanka. Is it possible to start a new life when you‘ve been part of an organization considered terrorist? And is Vetrichelvi ready to face the truth about her own role in the movement?

Agnieszka Zwiefka is an award winning documentary film director. Her last film THE QUEEN OF SILENCE (2014) premiered at IDFA in the main competition and was screened at over 40 festivals worldwide, awarded over 20 times and coproduced by such TV stations as HBO Europe, ZDF/ARTE, SVT, YLE and RAI. Agnieszka Zwiefka also holds a PhD degree and works as a lecturer of documentary film at the Institute of Journalism and Social Communication at the University of Wroclaw. Member of European Film Academy and Polish Filmmakers Society. Alumna of Dok.Incubator, EsoDoc, ScripTeast and Berlinale Talents.

Writer & Director
Agnieszka Zwiefka

Cinematography
Kacper Czubak

Editor
Thomas Ernst

Producer
Stefan Kloos
Michaela Pňačeková

Co-Producer
Agnieszka Zwiefka
Iris Lammertsma

Line Producer
Bianca Laschalt

Music
Anselme Pau

Sound
Sebastian Löffler
Kai Hesselbarth

Sound Design
Andreas Vorwerk

Re-Recording Mixing
Tobias Adam

Production
Kloos & Co. Ost

Co-Production
Chilli Productions, Poland
Witfilm, The Netherlands

World Sales
Rise and Shine World Sales

German-Polish Film Fund (PISF, MDM, MBB, FFA)
Eurimages
Catapult Film Fund
Polish Film Institute

World Premiere
One World – International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival 2020, Prague, Czech Republic

Further Festivals
Millennium Docs Against Gravity 2020, Poland
Movies that Matter 2021, The Hague, The Netherlands

Watch online here: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/scarsvoden