Very rarely does cinema, the Cannes holy grail, generate as much buzz on social media as a Schiaparelli gown. Hardly any Punjabi film does this.
The film, written and directed by Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) student Mehar Malhotra, Parchve Masya Ratan De (Shadows of the Moonless Nights), a Punjabi-language short film about claustrophobia and nostalgic awakening inside a cramped Mumbai flat, was the toast of this year’s Indian.
It appears that Punjabi films are taking the world by storm, because about a week later, on May 30, another Punjabi-language film, set in rural Punjab, quietly grabbed the headlines at the New York Indian Film Festival at the Angelica Film Center in New York’s East Village as the annual festival’s “centrepiece film”.
Writer and director of Kikaran De Phool (Acacia Flowers), Chandigarh-based 32-year-old Anmol Sidhu depicts the existential crises of orchestra dancers from rural Punjab who perform at weddings.
This is his fifth film. Sidhu’s most traveled work to date is his second film, Jaggi (2022), which was an indie success that, in addition to making it to various film festivals and Mubi (for a while), also caught the attention of English-language film critics – often the ultimate bar of success for a regional indie in India.
Sidhu is a resident of Kauloke village in Bathinda district. As a child, he used to travel about 12 kilometers with his father to watch films in the theater and covered almost the same distance to go to college before moving to Chandigarh, finding employment at the production house Ideas Factory and then starting work on his own. Impotence, failed masculinity, trauma and sexual violence were central themes in the life of Jaggi, the film’s protagonist, which was set in a village. Sidhu, now also a producer, says in a telephone interview from Chandigarh, “I made five short films by Punjabi writers last year, because I feel we need an ecosystem for writers and filmmakers who think beyond what works commercially and, like me, take out the stories of rural Punjab.” “I wanted to uncover the mystery surrounding orchestral dancers – who they are, their origins, and the narratives that shape their lives,” he says of his New York debut. With the empathy and docu-drama aesthetic that defines his work, Sidhu invites audiences into a world where performance becomes both escape and endurance.
A year after Jaggi came out, 33-year-old Mohali-based writer Harinder Kaur, born and raised in Khokhar village in Sri Muktsar Sahib district, made her screenplay debut with the hit Kali Jotta (2023) – which most box-office reports estimate was made on a budget. ₹4.5 crores and earned approx. ₹40.5 crores worldwide. The commercial success of Kali Jotta, available on Amazon Prime Video, is unusual as it is an anti-patriarchal story about lawyer Ananth (Vamika Gabbi) returning to his hometown and Rabia (Neeru Bajwa, also the film’s producer), a free-thinking woman on the verge of mental collapse due to past injustice and violence. Kaur, whose early life was constrained by family pressure and social conformity, found her cinematic voice while studying for a master’s degree and MPhil at Punjabi University, Patiala. Kaur says, “During the lockdown, I wrote my script mostly sitting on the steps of my ancestral house because writing a film was unimaginable for my family. I wanted to tell the story of a small-town or rural Punjabi woman. In a way, this is my story too.” Well-known Punjabi film director Vijay Arora, with whom she was connected through mutual friends, liked it and decided to direct it. “On the sets, the crew members were surprised that the story was written by a woman. Now, three years later, I see few women from small towns and rural Punjab working in films.”
In March this year, Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann announced that the state would build a new film city and increase support for filmmakers. 60 to 80 films are made in Punjab every year, many of which feature singer-actors in central roles. Diljit Dosanjh’s global popularity is the pinnacle of Punjabi stardom – he is also known for his work in Bollywood (for example, Imtiaz Ali’s Amar Singh Chamkila) and some indie-spirited films, most famously as human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra in Honey Trehan-directed Punjab 95, which is still stuck with the censor board three years after its completion. Trehan’s emotionally compelling film, based on the same year that Aditya Chopra’s Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge broke all box-office records, depicts Punjab with a focus on the bright yellow mustard fields. Yellow fields, Bhangra-infused weddings and clownish Sardars have long been signatures of Punjabiyat in Hindi cinema. Not much has changed since then. Abhishek Chaubey’s Udta Punjab, which dealt with drug addiction among Punjabi youth in Amritsar and Tarn Taran, was a pioneering Bollywood effort, and Kohra showed the interiority of a serious Punjab and its characters for the first time in a series written in both Hindi and Punjabi.
The actor, who appeared in both Udta Punjab and Kohra, is seen in a small but memorable role opposite ultimate parallel-cinema icon Naseeruddin Shah in 51-year-old writer-director Gurvinder Singh’s upcoming film Rehmat, which filmmaker and cinematographer Shashank Walia calls “pind indie” – films set in rural Punjab, in which the characters reflect its social and political realities. Singh Ki Rehmat, inspired by the short stories of renowned author Ajit Kaur, is a hyper-connected narrative set in a village. A man who returns to his long-lost homeland, grief and silence over an unexpected state murder, and the racing of pigeons – this story about the power of compassion finds many layers. “You could say ‘rahmat’ is a theme or a character in this film. Where normally there might be hatred, there is kindness,” says Singh. Ajit Kaur’s daughter, painter Aparna Kaur, is collaborating on the project with Pavo Films. Like most of Singh’s works, including his big festival-circuit debut in 2011, Anhe Ghore Da Daan (Alms for a Blind Horse), Rehmat has an intrigue rooted in its slow-burn aesthetic, real-time pace and stillness, and like his previous films, promises to become a festival-circuit favourite.
Between 2002 and 2006, after graduating from FTII, Singh traveled extensively in Punjab, staying and traveling with folk travelers, documenting folk tales and oral narratives. Born and raised in Delhi to second-generation Punjabi parents displaced by Partition, Singh, a painter now working on an exhibition, discovered the diversity inherent in Punjabiyat during those years. Singh says, “Those years really shaped me as a storyteller of the realities of Punjab. I learned that Punjab has about 32 different dialects, many faiths beyond Sikhism and oral storytelling traditions, including Sufi traditions.”
Singh’s influence can be felt while watching Shashank Walia’s debut feature film Hanare De Panchhi (Birds in the Dark), co-produced by Hansal Mehta’s True Story Films. Shot in black and white, Walia, also an FTII graduate, began shooting the film when the farmers’ protests began. He and his producer and partner Reema Kaur spent several months with farm-labor communities in villages around Tarn Taran district and along the banks of the Beas river before the narrative took shape – poetic and gritty at the same time. The overarching themes of sexuality, patriarchy and land rights became his approach to storytelling. Walia says, “From his life, and from the memories of those months, emerged the character of Dilraj (Mauli Singh). He is a farm labourer, an organiser, a Marxist, a resistance figure, a friend and a lover.”
After freeing Aamir (Shahnawaz Bhat), a man he wrongly captured, Jagtar (Harinder Aujla), a police informer, returns to his village, where he meets his former lover, a rich landlord with whom he shared a secret, risky and toxic relationship. He also meets his childhood friend Dilraj, a rebel from a small village who unites landless farmers for their rights. When Amir arrives in the village, a revolution unfolds that overturns the village’s expectations of queer love, caste resistance, and labor. “You could call it an indie indie film,” says Walia.
Birds in the Dark is a social and political commentary wrapped in slow, poetic storytelling. Its heart is of feudal rural surroundings – celebrated by the best of “Pinda Indi”.
(Sanjukta Sharma is a Mumbai-based writer and film critic. Write to her at sanjukta.sharma@gmail.com.)
