Govinda Van Maele is a Luxembourgish director born in the Grand Duchy in 1983, as son of Sri Lankan‑Belgian parents. He started making films in his teens and was hired to work in the local film industry after graduating high school. His directorial credits include the shorts Josh (2007), A Day in the Open (2012), and You Go Ahead (2013), as well as the documentary We Might As Well Fail (2011). Two of his films – his short A Day in the Open (2012) and his first feature film Gutland (2017) – were selected in Luxembourg City Film Festival’s programme and won awards at the “Lëtzebuerger Filmpräis”. Gutland was chosen as the Luxembourgish candidate for the 2019 Oscars as Best Foreign Language Film.