Your Touch Makes Others Invisible

Rajee Samarasinghe's "Your Touch Makes Others Invisible" tackles one of Sri Lanka's most painful chapters: the enforced disappearances during the country's 26-year civil war. Described by Samarasinghe as "a heterogenous docufiction investigating enforced disappearances," the film uses innovative approaches to make visible what was deliberately hidden.

One approach is the strategic use of deepfake technology, where famous Sri Lankan politicians' faces are mapped onto actors' bodies. Rajee asked me to implement custom face-swapping code for a more direct, tailored approach to the specific needs of the project.

Samarasinghe describes the deepfake elements as "a subtle use of AI, almost an Easter egg. It's meant to be a quiet visual clue, something that Sri Lankan audiences might pick up on even if it goes unnoticed by other audiences." The film announces this AI usage upfront with an opening title card: "We wish to acknowledge the use of generative AI technology in this documentary, applied in a few select shots."

This application serves the film's central theme of visibility and invisibility. In a conflict where people were systematically "disappeared," the artificial placement of recognizable political faces onto anonymous bodies creates a powerful visual metaphor, forcing viewers to confront the disconnect between public personas and human cost.

The work demonstrates how AI can serve documentary storytelling when applied with clear artistic and ethical intent—using technology's capacity for manipulation to reveal rather than conceal difficult truths. This represents a thoughtful evolution in documentary practice: deploying the same tools that can spread misinformation to instead illuminate suppressed histories.