In Conversation: The Cast and Crew of ‘Ben and Suzanne, A Reunion In 4 Parts’
Ben and Suzanne, A Reunion In 4 Parts follows the story of a couple’s hilarious but tragic attempt to rekindle their relationship over their holiday. The film premiered at the 2024 SXSW Film & TV Festival, making it the first time a narrative feature film by a Sri Lankan director has had its world premiere in the United States.
The film was shot in Sri Lanka over fifteen days, almost 9000 miles from home, and through the chaos and uncertainty of the SAG-AFTRA strike. It is a testament to the joys of bringing a story—loved and cared for—to life through film and sound.
I spoke to writer and director Shaun Seneviratne, lead actors Anastasia Olowin and Sathya Sridharan, and producer Doron JéPaul to learn more about their work and process.
Ben and Suzanne spanned 15 days across Sri Lanka or “the land of my Heritage” as you called it. We’re taken across different parts of Sri Lanka from Colombo to Kandy to Badulla and Galle and witness Sri Lanka as this continual backdrop. We see the Pettah bus stand, Galle Face Green, the Tirana Video Store and, of course, the Department of Coffee where I was once almost thrown out for being too loud.
Across the movie, we see different faces, some of these actors who have never been on screen before and some of them your own family. What was that experience like? Why was it important for you to bring them in?
SHAUN: The whole experience was overwhelming, but I believe in overwhelming experiences in a certain way.
There's always a little bit of fear, but [also] excitement throughout the entire process. We were lucky to work with a great local production company called Vision Works. They made the whole process straightforward.
Anastasia and I did a location scout in February. Before shooting, we did the tech scout. So much of the movie was growing out of that experience, where even just traveling through the country and researching the locations informed the story. The moments that would happen on these location scouts would then be a part of that story. Throughout it all, we met interesting people who came about in the simplest of ways.
This movie got to be my way of sharing . . . what traveling is from a . . . Western perspective, where you are a little pampered sometimes and you're given the driver to take you around everywhere. Coupled with the . . . reality of experiencing what life in Sri Lanka is like.
What's interesting is that we get to experience a lot of that reality through Suzanne, and Suzanne's experiences in the country. With all the real Sri Lankan people that are there. And so, in wanting to stay authentic, it was important to me that we didn't have any actors. I wanted everyone that was going to be in Sri Lanka to be non-professional.
The actors that are in the movie are Anastasia and Sathya. My cousin played Priyanthi, and her name is Priyanthi. Mohammed, the driver, was our driver on the location scout. And there was just a great vibe and that's how that came to be. The expat drug dealers are my cousin from England and her husband from Australia.
There's that really powerful scene where Ben needs to translate what Kavita, the work client, was saying to Suzanne, and [Kavita] had never been on camera before. She was a friend of our unit production manager Sanath's wife. They work in an office together, and she took the bus to the Sigiriya area with her family. She was, at first, a little soft-spoken and more reserved, I would say. But once we started filming, she was able to communicate things in such a clear way.
It was so powerful and amazing. It got to be a chance to get to know the people and know the country on a level that I still don't think I'd ever [have been] able to, had I not made this movie.
Ben and Suzanne, A Reunion in 4 Parts is the fourth piece of a string of short films that explore the unraveling of the complex but honest relationship between these two characters. Anastasia and Sathya, you both play the roles of Suzanne and Ben—could you share more about what this story meant to you and what it was like working on it for the last decade with Shaun?
ANASTASIA: We met 10 years ago, of course. I saw a Backstage listing that was very beautifully crafted. I immediately connected to the story that Shaun was pitching for the short film. Then we auditioned, and we were both cast. I think Shaun knew Sathya from Tumblr. But it was this lovely Kismet that kind of came together [in] our first short film Tourists, which [was] such a beautiful experience. And immediately, I felt a sense of collaboration with both Shaun and Sathya.
This project has never gone away. For me, there's never been a moment where I'm moving on from that. It's always been this constant presence of, “At some point, we're going to make the feature. At some point, these characters are going to continue to develop and we're gonna get to show them in this way that was always intended.”
It was always intended to be a prelude to a feature. It's been a long journey, but it's been really valuable. We've gotten to know each other as such dear friends and collaborators over this time. So it's been really special.
SATHYA: Yeah. I'll just say that Shaun was stalking me on Tumblr and reached out to me on Facebook. And because he was casting something else, we got a coffee and instantly hit it off [with] our tastes and music. Ideas about art and music and the way we were raised in the punk indie worlds that we were swimming around in high school.
It's so rare to meet kindred artistic spirits, especially South Asians. Everybody's coming from a different background, everybody has different influences. And I wasn't raised in a particularly Bollywood-forward household. So, to meet Shaun and to also be in the same waters as him was just meant to be.
The three of us have formed this really beautiful, artistic family for the past 10 years. It's been lovely to be able to build the story with them. There's so much trust already in place. There's an unspoken language that we have. And we always believed in what Shaun was trying to do, [in] his vision and his taste. So it was just a question of getting to the finish line, which we're very proud to have done.
ANASTASIA: I think something that was such a nice feeling for me is [that] I only just watched the film a couple of weeks ago because I wanted to wait [until] it was done. I'm so thrilled with how it turned out. We had spent 10 years working on this.
Just knowing that Shaun was really happy with the footage made me feel like . . . we were able to make this for him in a way. This has been Shaun's vision for so long. Watching the film was so satisfying, because I was like, “Oh, this is the film that Shaun wanted to make.” That meant as much to me as all of it.
The film begins with the legendary C. T. Fernando. Across the movie, we hear the tanpura drums and the surpeti, some of these you mentioned were sourced from Sri Lanka itself. The music added to the authenticity and vibrancy of what one sees on screen. What was that experience like, of intertwining both music and film?
SHAUN: I’m super sensitive to the use of music in movies. I have a lot of opinions on how they're typically used. I come from a music background and I think there's always an adjacent quality to every director that's tied to some other art form that helps inform their tastes. Some directors might be a little bit more literary. I think for me, so much of it comes from this music influence and background.
For the C. T. Fernando one, I just knew for the opening I needed something. I wanted something that felt like when you heard Ravi Shankar’s score for Pather Panchali.
My wife and I had listened to Sri Lankan music. She found out about “Bara Bage”. . . . The first 20 seconds of that song, it's some of the most beautiful music I've ever heard in my life. It's Sri Lankan, but it's pop. And it's pretty sounding, but it expresses longing.
It has all those tones that are present throughout the whole film. To see that over the opening . . . we were like “Okay, yeah, that's it, that's done.” And then for the other music, I was trying to think about how to incorporate the Sri Lankan fingerprint in a way that felt unique. It wasn't about trying to just find other Sri Lankan songs to fill in those parts of the score. It was about how we can create something different. I'm very averse to super melodic music that's kind of telling you how to feel.
I had these instruments at home that I bought at the Pettah Market, the digital tanpura and surpeti. We had just been recording that in, and our editor Joe was like . . . “Just record all the tabla, record a bunch of different drone sounds at different keys and then send it my way.”
They provided musical impulse that ties to Sri Lanka without melodically telling you what to feel. They get to be neutral. I was interested in objectivity, how to be observational, and just see what's happening and not tell the audience what to feel or get too much into character psychology. The music got to be an extension of that.
When we were working for the hotel scene towards the end, that's where we had the composer, Jake D’Ambra, who’s an amazing saxophone player. What's cool is he sampled the tabla sounds and incorporated that into his score. He sampled the tanpura sounds and incorporated them into the score.
We ended up making this liminal space pop music that has the elements of Sri Lankan music. The whole musical process was super rewarding and experimental in a way that I dig. Through that experimentation, we were able to come up with something that I think feels pretty singular in a movie.
The film production began in July 2023 and as we know had to be halted just two days after the SAG-Aftra Strike began. The production received an interim agreement and was shot for 15 days across Sri Lanka. Writing, creating, and putting your mark in the world brings its own set of challenges. And I can only imagine what it meant to not only work on bringing a story over the last 15 years but also bring it to the world independently.
Could you comment on what that experience was like for all of you as writers, artists and producers on screen?
SHAUN: It was hard, it was super, super hard. The first feature is always going to be stressful. And a first feature [shot] in other countries is going to be even more stressful. [It was] compounded by the circumstance of having to be on hold. And then we're in limbo, and we don't know what's happening.
We had to redo the schedule every day and scenes had to be adjusted because we couldn’t film it in the original way we had planned to film it. We had to make adjustments and adapt every day. It was difficult . . . in ways that I think all supported and benefited the final piece. I think beautiful things come out of struggle and difficulty.
I think that moment when we found out, we were loading in. Catering was ready with tea and coffee, and Anastasia, Sathya, and I were sitting together, we were on the phone with Doron, and the press release had just gone out from SAG. I had just gotten a leech bite and my foot was bleeding.
I felt confident that we were going to get the interim agreement because we are a true indie production. But the scary thing was when, right? Like we know it was going to come through, but how long will we be in limbo for? We had to get everybody together. I had to make that announcement, “We're gonna go on pause, we are not going to continue production, we hope everyone's able to come back.” But we didn't know when that would be.
I could film documentary-style locations, Sigiriya, and things like that we didn’t need to use Sathya and Anastasia for. But a line producer—Michael Magala—over there reminded me that we were not making a documentary about Sri Lanka. And there's only so much that we can do, and it was Friday. Because of the time difference, we wouldn't hear back until Tuesday of the following week.
Could we afford to spend four more days in Sri Lanka as money was being siphoned? We really couldn't and it was a super hard conversation. But we were sitting there over breakfast and eventually, it was just like, “Alright, if we don't hear by tonight, then tomorrow morning we'll have to pull the plug.” What does that mean? I don't know. Will we ever finish this movie? I don't know. Will we have to come back and figure it out? Or postpone? I wasn't ready to explore those things yet, but I knew we couldn't wait any longer.
So we get in the van to go shoot some inserts. I'm like, “Let’s at least shoot something today.” And then, on that van ride . . . I got the email from SAG approving us for the interim agreement, and so then from there, it was just, “Everyone go back to set, we're on.” It was difficult and I think we're all stronger as a result of having been through that experience.
ANASTASIA: I just want to give a special thank you to the Courtyard Marriott Colombo. The staff there made us feel very safe and comfortable in a very trying time. And like Shaun said, it was a bizarre kind of liminal space because we weren't there to be on vacation. We're in this beautiful place with a gorgeous pool, right in the middle of Colombo. But that's not why we were there.
We wanted to work, we wanted to be on set. And so it was a very bizarre experience, to be honest. And [we’re] very, very grateful to SAG for finally letting us get back to it. The other thing I wanted to say was that our crew was incredibly understanding. We weren't sure how they were going to respond to us going on strike and putting them out of work for however long. But they were understanding and supportive. I think everyone was able to come back when we were able to pick up after that hiatus, which was also amazing. I'm very grateful for that.
SATHYA: I feel like the script got so much better in that time that we were there. Shaun was able to take some space and figure out how to make the thing more fleet of foot, the storytelling more propulsive, more elliptical. In other iterations, you would see the entrances and the exits. And now we were dropping into the middle of things. We were just going faster and the story moved faster because Shaun had to make so many adjustments to the schedule and to what we were shooting.
So as he was saying, it only strengthened what the end product was. But it was pretty harrowing. We were there for a couple of nights and we had a good time. We went out and listened to some baila. It was so much fun that night. But that quickly wore off, because we wanted to get back to work, as Anastasia said, and it was challenging.
DORON: That was a real gift to bear witness to, the steps of faith amid uncertainty. . . . I will say that—and Shaun alluded to it, and it is true—trials and tribulations like that strengthen the value of what it means to be a filmmaker and not just a business.
This is an industry and it is a business. But one of the things that I loved about this team and why I was so blessed that this was a project that I got to be a part of and continue to persevere in, is it's a testament to creatives, filmmakers, the sense of resilience in the midst, and flexibility.
I think in an industry that is so often connected to just the bottom line, it would have been very easy for any individual to bow out, financially, emotionally, and strategically. This idea that we didn't know when we were going to get this interim agreement, the conversations on the ground [we] were having with SAG as a producer, trying to infer to them that there are different grades of independent projects. And what does that mean? I felt like Shaun and I had a couple of really long mornings for him and nights for me, where we learned a lot about, oh, the beautiful, yet ugly side of this industry.
And what it showed us, in the end, was if we do care about honouring people, honouring our unions, and simultaneously believing that, [then] this can still be done. When we did get the interim agreement, to just witness the testament of both patience and endurance, it was great. It made this final product even that much more special because it would have been very easy for a project like this at its magnitude, as a true DIY project, to just be like, “Oh, the big bosses have come and we've quit.” And in many ways, it was a very David and Goliath experience to see the film that came out of that.
To get accepted into a place like South [by Southwest], be in a narrative competition there, to represent so many firsts for so many people and say, “Hey, we're still standing. We made it.” And not only did we make it, but we made a pretty kick-ass film—that's special.
This interview has been edited for brevity & clarity.