Ava DuVernay’s ARRAY Releasing has acquired Deepa Mehta’s latest. An adaptation of Shyam Selvadurai’s coming-of-age novel of the same name, “Funny Boy” will launch on Netflix in December. Variety broke the news.
Set in Sri Lanka during the ’70s and ’80s, “Funny Boy” depicts “Tamil protagonist Arjie’s (Arush Nand/Brandon Ingram) sexual awakening from a young boy, deemed ‘funny’ by disapproving family, to a teenager enamored by a male classmate, just as political tensions escalate between the Sinhalese and Tamils in the years leading up to the 1983 uprisings — violence that led into a 26-year civil war,” the source details.
Mehta penned the script with Selvadurai.
“Funny Boy” will arrive on Netflix December 10, and “will also receive a theatrical release in Canada, as well as select cities throughout the U.S. that month,” Variety notes.
“Deepa Mehta’s ‘Funny Boy’ builds upon the iconic filmmaker’s provocative canon of work as a film that is beautiful to the eye and emotional for the heart. Her singular vision for adapting this best-selling novel invites film-lovers to delve deep into themes of identity, acceptance and family, while she shares the majesty and turmoil of Sri Lanka during this particular time in history,” said DuVernay and ARRAY president Tilane Jones. “We are honored to share Ms. Mehta’s latest cinematic gem with fans and film-lovers and we cherish our time working alongside this exceptionally talented director.”
“All my films are quite political,” Mehta told Variety. “This was a good fit for me, because it’s not just a coming-of-age film. It also deals with an oppression of minorities. Who is the victim? Who is the perpetrator? Where is humanity? It spoke to me on a very human level.”
Mehta’s “Water” received an Oscar nod in 2007 for Best Foreign Language Film of the Year. “Anatomy of Violence” and “Midnight’s Children” are among her other features.
ARRAY Releasing’s other acquisitions this year include Isabel Sandoval’s “Lingua Franca” and Numa Perrier’s “Jezebel.” The former tells the story of an undocumented Filipina trans woman working as a caregiver for an elderly Russian woman in Brooklyn, and the latter is inspired by its writer-director’s experiences and tells the story of a fetish cam girl.
DuVernay recently signed on to write, direct, and produce “Caste,” a feature adaptation of Isabel Wilkerson’s non-fiction bestseller exploring the role caste has played in shaping the U.S. Her recent credits include Netflix drama “When They See Us” and big budget fantasy pic “A Wrinkle in Time.” DuVernay and ARRAY will be awarded with the inaugural Marian MacDowell Arts Advocacy Award on October 19.
