Rajee Samarasinghe

Colombo, Sri Lanka

Rajee Samarasinghe (b. 1988) is an award-winning filmmaker born and raised in Sri Lanka. His work tackles contemporary sociopolitical conditions in Sri Lanka through the scope of his own identity and the deconstruction of ethnographic practices. Rajee received his BFA from the University of California San Diego in 2010 and his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 2016. He is currently working on his debut feature film, "Your Touch Makes Others Invisible," inspired by his childhood experiences during the Sri Lankan civil war—the project received a Sundance Documentary Fund grant.

Rajee's work has been exhibited at venues internationally including the Tiger Short Competition at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, BFI London Film Festival, Slamdance Film Festival, FIDMarseille, Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Ann Arbor Film Festival, San Francisco International Film Festival, CROSSROADS at SFMOMA, REDCAT, Media City Film Festival, Message to Man, Havana Film Festival, New Orleans Film Festival, Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, Internationales Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg, Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival, Antimatter [Media Art], Les Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, & Chicago Underground Film Festival, among many others. He's received the "Film House Award for visionary filmmaking" at the Athens International Film + Video Festival, an "Audience Award" at CROSSROADS at SFMOMA, and a "Jury Award" at the Sydney Underground Film Festival.