Republic of Amnesia (2025, 78 mins, UK/Sri Lanka) follows the rise and fall of Sri Lanka’s Aragalaya (“The Struggle”) — the youth-led protest movement that forced authoritarian president Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country in 2022. At its heart are young activists like Melani, Buwanaka and Jeana, who lead marches, face arrest, and fight for a more inclusive future. As they challenge a corrupt political dynasty and a system rigged to resist change, their struggle raises a deeper question: can fragile hope survive in a country built on forgetting?

A political coming-of-age story, not only for the young people at its centre, but also for a country grappling with memory, dissent and the cost of forgetting. The spirit of creative defiance that shaped the Aragalaya has since rippled across parts of Asia, giving the film renewed resonance through these wider parallels.

Watch the trailer here.

The screening of this powerful feature documentary will be followed by a panel discussion and audience Q&A with the filmmaker, Mr Kannan Arunasalam, and Dr Lauren Dempster (QUB), Professor Brian Dooley (Human Rights First) and Dr Nikhil Narayan (QUB).

This event is co-hosted with the Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, and the Human Rights Centre, Queen’s University Belfast.

Mr Kannan Arunasalam (Director)

Kannan Arunasalam is a British-Sri Lankan documentary filmmaker. His films have received wide international recognition through his work in leading platforms including the BBC, Guardian Documentaries, and The New Yorker. Kannan trained under the Witness team in observational documentary filmmaking. His last film, ‘Sri Lanka’s Rebel Wife’ (2022) premiered at the Frontline Club, London, and was shortlisted for best documentary at the DIG Investigative Film awards. Kannan’s previous film, ‘The Tent’ (2019), a two channel installation film, was the focus of his British solo exhibition at the prestigious Yorkshire Contemporary, U.K. (formerly The Tetley). Kannan is also a qualified media and human rights lawyer and was a visiting professor teaching ‘Media representations of the Sri Lankan conflict’ at Cornell University. His feature documentary, ‘Possible Landscapes’ (2025) in collaboration with two professors at Cornell University, recently had its world premiere at BlackStar Film Festival. This is his second feature film.

Professor Brian Dooley

Professor Brian Dooley is an Honorary Professor of Practice at the Mitchell Institute and a Senior Advisor at Human Rights First, a US-based NGO.  He specialises in working with Human Rights Defenders (HRDs) in conflict and post-conflict contexts, and was senior advisor to the UN Special Rapporteur on HRDs, Mary Lawlor, from 2020 to 2023.  His most recent work has been in the Hong Kong revolution and on Russia’s war on Ukraine. Notably, he documented the Hong Kong protests/revolution in 2019/2020.  He has also written two books related to the conflict in Northern Ireland, including a comparative study of the civil rights movements in the US and Northern Ireland.

Dr Lauren Dempster is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Law and Fellow of the Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice. She is Theme Lead for the School of Law’s Transitional Justice research cluster, Co-director of QUB Human Rights Centre, and an active member of QUB's Institute for Criminology and Criminal Justice. Her teaching includes transitional justice, criminology, and research methods. Lauren’s research focuses on transitional justice and her research interests include critical approaches to transitional justice, efforts to address the legacy of the past in Northern Ireland, enforced disappearance, the relationship between transitional justice and environmental harm, and victim mobilisation. Lauren’s first monograph, Transitional Justice and the Disappeared of Northern Ireland: Silence, Memory, and the Construction of the Past was published by Routledge in 2019 and shortlisted for the Hart-SLSA Book Prize for Early Career Academics in 2020. Her second monograph, Green Transitional Justice, co-authored with Dr Rachel Killean (University of Sydney) was awarded the Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand's Book Prize 2025. Lauren currently holds an AHRC Research, Development and Engagement Fellowship for her research on Forensic Scientists and Knowledge Production in Transitional Justice.

Dr Nikhil Narayan

Dr Nikhil Narayan is a Lecturer at the School of Law at Queen’s University Belfast. His research and teaching focuses on human rights, humanitarian law, transitional justice, international criminal justice, public international law, post-conflict constitutional reform, conflict transformation and the rule of law, particularly in the Global South. Nikhil’s forthcoming monograph, Guarantees of Non-Recurrence in Transitional Justice: Lessons from Sri Lanka, will be published by Routledge later this year. An experienced scholar and practitioner with 20 years of experience across Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Nikhil has advised NGOs, governments and international organizations, provided expert analysis, led fact-finding missions, and authored policy briefs, field studies and scholarship on peace, conflict and justice. He is a Senior Peace Fellow with the Public International Law & Policy Group, sits on the justice expert roster of the UK FCDO’s Civilian Stabilisation Group, and is a member of the New York Bar Association.