Rajee Samarasinghe is a Sri Lankan filmmaker and visual artist born and raised amidst the decades-long civil war in Sri Lanka. He received his BFA from the University of California San Diego and his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. Much of his work interrogates the sociopolitical landscape of Sri Lanka through the deconstruction of nonfiction modalities and the legacies of colonialism in contemporary media. His practice was born out of a desire to understand the circumstances around his childhood and often navigates the terrain of memory, migration, and impermanence..

Samarasinghe recently completed his debut feature film, Your Touch Makes Others Invisible, which explores post-civil war Sri Lanka. The project has received support from the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Program, Berlinale Talents’ Doc Station, Field of Vision, and True/False Film Festival’s PRISM program, and had its world premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2025. Named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film in 2020, Samarasinghe was also awarded a MacDowell Fellowship in 2023, and a Yaddo Residency in 2024. He has had solo shows at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA - Modern Mondays), the Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, and the Los Angeles Filmforum (2220 Arts), among others.

Samarasinghe's films have been exhibited at venues internationally including the Tiger Short Competition at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, New Directors/New Films by MoMA and Film at Lincoln Center, MoMA's Doc Fortnight, BFI London Film Festival, FIDMarseille, Festival du nouveau cinéma, Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Slamdance, SFFILM Festival, Melbourne International Film Festival, Vancouver International Film Festival, Guanajuato International Film Festival, BlackStar, CROSSROADS/SFMOMA, Media City Film Festival, Prismatic Ground etc. He's received the New Cinema Award at the Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, the Tíos Award for Best International Film at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, the Film House Award for Visionary Filmmaking at the Athens International Film + Video Festival, and the Best Video Art & Experimental Award at the Tirana Film Festival among others.