Running in the Family – Ondaatje Michael (2022)

“During certain hours, at certain years in our lives, we see ourselves as remnants from the earlier generations that were destroyed... I think all of our lives have been terribly shaped by what went on before us.” Twenty-five years after leaving his native Sri Lanka for the cool winters of Ontario, a chaotic dream of tropical heat and barking dogs prompts Michael Ondaatje to return home and revisit a childhood and a family he never fully understood. Together with his siblings and children, Ondaatje gathers rumours, anecdotes, poems, records and memories to piece together this fragmented portrayal of his family’s past, his father’s destructive alcoholism, and the colourful stories and secrets of ancestors who were both disgraced and adored throughout centuries of Sri Lankan society. In an exotic, evocative portrait of the heat, wildlife, sounds and silences of the Sri Lankan landscape, Ondaatje combines vivid recreations of a privileged, eccentric older generation with a deeply personal journey of reconciliation as he explores his own ghosts and the continuing influence of his family’s extraordinary history on his life.