Your Touch Makes Others Invisible is a 2025 Sri LankanâÂÂAmerican hybrid documentary film directed by Rajee Samarasinghe. The film examines the aftermath of enforced disappearances in Sri Lanka following the countryâÂÂs civil war.
The film premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2025 and went on to win the Truer Than Fiction Award at the 41st Independent Spirit Awards.
As many as 100,000 people, predominantly members of the minority Tamil community, are estimated to have disappeared during the 26-year-long Sri Lankan Civil War. Through a unique synthesis of interviews, news clips and re-enactments this docufiction reflects on this harrowing history as families search for loved ones that disappeared without a trace.
Your Touch Makes Others Invisible premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2025 in the festival's Bright Future section. The film subsequently screened at various international film festivals and cinematheques.
The film received critical attention for its hybrid documentary approach and its treatment of memory and political violence. Critics highlighted its blend of testimony with stylized, poetic imagery. In Filmmaker, Vadim Rizov wrote that the film proceeds along âÂÂimpressionistic and spectacular lines,â using oblique strategies to approach memory and absence. Debanjan Dhar of High On Films called it âÂÂa vital, self-fracturing reckoningâ and âÂÂa shifting monument to memories,â praising its âÂÂformal fluidity.â Writing for In Review Online, Michael Sicinski emphasized the filmâÂÂs deliberate refusal of synthesis, moving between the everyday and the mysterious as a reflection of unresolved historical trauma.