Dharmesena Pathiraja's only Tamil language film, Ponmani (Younger Sister) is about a starkly different socio-economic culture and political climate. Set in the northern city of Jaffna, it traces the fortunes and concerns of an economically depleted upper caste, lower middle class family. An evocative film about land, women, romance and tragedy, narrated in an idiom of understatement.
Loosely based on Franz Kafka's novella Metamorphosis 'Swaroopa' narrates the story of Gregory Samson and his family of father, mother, sister assisted by a maid within the social transformations taking place in late colonial and early postcolonial Sri Lanka.
Two lovers, Yoga and Parvathi, meet on the battlefield of the Sri Lankan civil war. As the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam attack the Sri Lankan army and tighten their grip on the Tamil people, Yoga and Parvathi struggle with feelings for each other and their own commitments to the LTTE. Parvathi's family is relocated to a concentration camp and Yoga is sent on a mission to Colombo by a jealous LTTE commander. But they soon meet again in battle and Parvathi becomes pregnant with Yoga's child. In the final days of the war, the Sri Lankan army closes in on the LTTE and rescues the Tamil refugees, and the lovers desperately flee the army and the LTTE for the sake of their baby.
