Funny Boy (film)

Funny Boy is a 2020 drama film, directed by Deepa Mehta. An adaptation of Shyam Selvadurai's 1994 novel of the same name, the film centres on the coming of age of Arjie Chelvaratnam, a young Tamil boy in Sri Lanka who is coming to terms with his homosexuality against the backdrop of the increased tensions between Tamil and Sinhalese people before the breakout of the Sri Lankan Civil War.

Shot on location in Chennai and Colombo, the film stars Arush Nand as Arjie in childhood and Brandon Ingram as Arjie in his teenage years, as well as Nimmi Harasgama, Ali Kazmi, Agam Darshi, Seema Biswas, Rehan Mudannayake and Shivantha Wijesinha. Its production was first announced in 2018. The film had a theatrical release in Canada and selected cities in the United States, and was distributed internationally via Netflix. The movie rights for the United States have been acquired by Ava DuVernay’s ARRAY Releasing who handled worldwide distribution.

It was broadcast December 4, 2020, on CBC Television and was released for streaming on CBC Gem the same day. It was selected as the Canadian entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 93rd Academy Awards, but was disqualified from that category by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences due to not meeting the academy's requirement that fifty percent of the dialogue be in a language other than English.