Prasanna Vithanage was born in Sri Lanka in 1962. After having directed several plays, he made his first feature film in 1992. His second feature, Dark Night of the Soul (1996) won all the main prizes at the Sri Lanka Film Critics Forum Awards. In 2007 he produced the film Machan, directed by Uberto Pasolini in Sri Lanka. Although initially banned, Silence in the Courts (2015) is the first documentary to have been very successful with the public in his country. In 2020, he made Children of the Sun, which had its world premiere at the Festival of Busan.