Calima (short documentary film)

To the Heart of the Mother (a feature film by Anusha Tyson )

Producers: Hey Sister Film

Anusha Tysons story about motherhood, loss, and trying to understand her background deeply moved us, and it has stayed with us ever since we saw material ten years ago. Today, we are honored to work as producers of the film, a deeply personal story that also speaks to something profoundly universal. 

SYNOPSIS

I have always been longing. 

The trees that held me, the ocean that gave me freedom 

and in between I sought that which had been lost… 

In the year 1979, the same year that the civil war breaks out in Sri Lanka, I am born, Anusha Urulapola, in a family of three children and a single mother, Anula. Anula works as a rubber tapper and in the beginning she is able to carry me with her, but when I grow too heavy she starts tying me to one of the rubber trees. I am prone to escape, once I roll down into a river, once into a well, and one time a wild dog bites me. When I am two years old Anula leaves me at a children’s home in the capital of Colombo. For a while, my siblings and Anula visit from time to time, but I become so upset and sad afterwards that they are forbidden to return. I am adopted away to Sweden, and on midsummer’s eve I arrive with my new parents, Hanseric and Gunilla, to Örebro and from now on my name is Anusha Caroline Andersson. During my whole childhood I fantasize about reuniting with my family. It will take almost 20 years before it becomes possible and nothing turns out as I imagined it. 

To the Heart of the Mother begins where the classical adoption story ends. The reunion with my biological family doesn’t turn out to be the “resolution” I have been hoping and longing for but rather a kind of prologue to the narrative about what happens after. What now? What do we do together? What kind of relation can we create, how, and do we even want to? Is it possible to recover a lost history and how do you accept being given away/abandoned as a child? What does it do to a parent and a family to give a child away and lose a sibling? What does it mean to adopt someone else’s child? Finding and reuniting with my family causes family secrets to rise to the surface and, among other things, it is revealed that my adoption was illegal and that my court papers were falsified. And when the door to that story begins opening I chose not to close it. 

Being adopted away meant for me to lose my homeland, language and the family I had been born into and lived with for two years. A part of me disappeared and there was no one to share the few memories I had with. The rubber tapper’s daughter is about understanding what unconditional love means, about the longing to be loved and seeking some kind of belonging, about reaching a sense of reconciliation and daring to be free.

Anusha Tyson 2026