by Janani K., India Today, Mumbai, April 2, 2026
Neelira movie review: Director Someetharan’s Neelira, starring Naveen Chandra, Roopa Koduvayur and Sananth Reddy, is a chamber drama set in the thick of the Sri Lankan civil war. The film is a straight-forward documentation of the effects of war on the lives of commoners.
There is a scene in director Someetharan’s Neelira where a group of children is playing outdoors in the midst of the Sri Lankan civil war in 1988. One of them blurts,” What’s a game without guns?,” as they indulge in a shooting game. It takes only one scene to put everything into context. These are children who should be playing hopscotch or hide-and-seek. Instead, they are thinking about shooting each other.
Neelira, translated as “a long night” in English, is a quietly devastating film about the human cost of war in Sri Lanka. Set almost entirely inside a single house, it traces the events of one night as a family prepares to host a wedding the following day. That night, a group of soldiers from the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) arrive at the house by mistake and are asked to stay put till dawn to avoid escalating tensions with the rebels.
One night. A family held hostage. An impending wedding. A war raging in the background. At 100 minutes, Neelira, without ever showing the actual war, transports audiences into a world where there is no guarantee of life from one minute to the next.
Director Someetharan, a Sri Lankan filmmaker, has billed Neelira as a fictional story rooted in the memories of a war child. The authenticity shows in every frame. The surroundings, the house, the objects within it — everything feels lived in. You can hear hens clucking, leaves rustling, utensils clanking — all of it carrying the weight of uncertainty. Every dog bark screams danger, almost like an alarm to hold on to life and protect what little remains. Every gunshot signals a potential confrontation within seconds, an instinct to dive into a bunker and hope to survive.
In the midst of all this, the wedding is a glimmer of hope — but even holding on to that feels heavy. The family steals little moments of joy where they can. The men busy themselves with wedding preparations while the women try on jewellery and choose sarees for the ceremony, finding warmth in the familiar rituals of life.
Their happiness is short-lived when the Indian Army soldiers enter the house. Their exchanges with the family lay bare the consequences of war with quiet precision. In one exchange, a character says, “A war is war, where does peace come in between?” — a line that lands with the weight of everything the film has been building. Rather than limiting itself to a survival drama, Neelira reaches further. There is a grandfather who fought in World War II, carrying his own memories of conflict into a new one. There is a track involving a couple separated by war, their story a quiet ache running beneath the surface. And there are the rebels themselves, humanised rather than demonised, fighting a war that has consumed everything around them.
The film acknowledges the ill-doings of the IPKF while simultaneously humanising its soldiers through the character of Captain, played by a measured Naveen Chandra. It is a careful, considered balance — one that refuses to reduce either side to caricature. When the Army knocks on the door, the women of the household instinctively layer themselves in multiple shirts. The matriarch burns every piece of evidence that could hint at their sympathies with the rebels. These are not dramatic acts. They are the quiet, practised survival instincts of people who have lived too long in the shadow of war.
Neelira tells and shows a great deal in its short runtime without ever feeling rushed or preachy. Its anti-war message lands not through speeches but through lived moments — small, specific, and deeply human. It keeps the tension alive throughout, and by the time it ends, you find yourself invested in these lives in a way that lingers well beyond the final frame.