Funny boy is something most Sri Lankan teenagers (who grew up in the late 80s and 90s ) can relate to. We lived most of our lives through a devastating civil war for over a decade. We suppressed so much during this time. Watching the main character struggle with expressing himself is so relatable it hurts! As much as I love Nimmi Harasgama, I think Brandon Ingram, Rehan Mudannayake and Aaarush Nand are definitely divas to watch out for!

I understand the controversy surrounding the casting, but as a Sri Lankan I stand by the artist's decision. It is a beautiful story Deepa Mehta wanted to share with us, and we need to respect the creative team and their decisions.

I wish the entire cast and crew the very best at the upcoming Academy awards! YOU GUYS HAVE MY VOTES! ( this includes my 10,000 other personalities.)

keep slaaaying!

I am so happy and pleased and proud to see a movie like this filmed in Sri Lanka and on Netflix!!! I hope this film starts conversations and I hope and pray for that change and justice come to the LGBT community in Sri Lanka. I hate racism and homophobia so much.

I want to deal with one of the criticisms of the film right away. I do not speak any of the languages of the sub continent at all and wouldn't recognise the difference between Sinhalese or Tamil to save my life. Therefore the poor-quality spoken dialogue from the non-Tamil actors playing members of that ethnic group was something I obviously never picked up on. OK, I'd be furious if I was watching a German film and, say, Swedish people were speaking poor German and pretending to be that nationality. But as I was in no position to pick up on this here, it didn't detract from my enjoyment of the film.

I always enjoy films that combine personal dramas and stories with sweeping political and societal events. Here we had them all in spades. Family dynamics, prejudices in both the domestic sphere and the national arena, differing viewpoints on how to deal with inter-community strife.

Within a country whose idyllic existence is slowly being rent apart by ethnic tensions, a wealthy family lives these problems in microcosm. The plot outline on IMDB contains many spoilers but I am not going to be so crass. The film concentrates on two periods, first of all in 1974 when Arjie is a child interested in dressing up as a girl with a protective auntie encouraging him and his parents attempting to get him to "man up". We see the prejudices that occurred even then between Sinhalese and Tamils. And Aunty Radha forced to depart for Canada because of them.

Then we follow Arjie in his teenage years when prejudice is turning into hatred between communities. He is caught up in this in both his love life and with his family whose patriarch wrongly thought their position in society would protect them.

It's a part of history I knew about, but not in detail. I have looked it up since and can see that, although there is not a clear political context in the film, the major issues and events seem to be true. I was mesmerised throughout and fascinated by both the wider and the personal stories. I'm so glad I saw this film.