
Witness - Picking up the Pieces
In Sri Lanka's Mannar district, a team of Tamil war widows spends three weeks of every month clearing landmines left behind by the Tamil Tigers, working for the Mines Advisory Group under the blazing northern heat. Filmmaker Yasir Khan and cinematographer Fadi Benni follow the women through the slow, methodical sweeps that make up the job, and through the lives that brought them to it. Indirani still mourns the husband the war took from her; Kohilaveni struggles with weeks away from her baby while she works. For most of the team, demining is not an abstract cause but a paycheck, often the only one supporting a household the war emptied of men. The film sits with the tension of each find, the fear before a mine is confirmed and the relief after it is defused, and lets the women explain plainly why they keep going: villages cannot be resettled and refugee camps cannot empty out until the ground underneath them is safe again.