Quote:
"Everyone foresaw a fourth film [after Fire, Earth, and Water], the final element. But I thought I was done, till I finished making Funny Boy. When I wrapped up the filming, it struck me that I had actually made [the fourth film] without quite intending to. Funny Boy is my fourth element—the element of space, as opposed to air. It is a temporal space Arjie occupies as a minority Tamil in Sri Lanka, in the in-betweens of his family, his love for Shehan, his upper-caste Sinhalese boyfriend, and the bloody war through which he is trying to find himself."
-- Deepa Mehta

Source:
Belliappa, Shruti. "Deepa Mehta on combining queer awakening and war in Funny Boy." Interview with Deepa Mehta. Financial Times (London), December 8, 2020.