Controversial, still officially unreleased film on a painful period for the Sikh community in the Punjab region of India where a separatist uprising was used by government and military authority as an excuse to abuse human rights to anyone who objected to State policy . . . or simply was around at the time and in the way. Tens of thousands of innocents affected: abducted off the streets, jailed without trial, tortured, murdered, pressured to inform, with illegal treatment used as a lever for extortion. (Or just for the fun of shooting someone and speeding up a 'quota' promotion.) And barely a soul speaking out, especially those who lived in the region, till human rights activist Jaswant Singh took a stand, spoke out, forced newspapers to cover the atrocities, went abroad to let the world know what was going on, then returned home in spite of the danger to continue the fight. A remarkable story, and one that was in a way mirrored by the treatment of the film itself which is still being held back by the current Indian film censorship board (in spite of different people and parties in office at the time). Banned, censored, over a hundred cuts ordered, finally switching from a theatrical release to legally unfettered streaming options only to be taken down from all Indian platforms after two days. Yet for all the goodwill, good production values, good cast and good intentions, the film remains dramatically inert. It’s nearly a built-in defect in many bio-pics, but just piling on ever-worse incident is not development. Here, there’s likely a better film to be found in a behind-the-scenes look at the troubles in getting this 5released than there is in the one they’ve found to tell of this still important, still unfinished episode of shame in recent Indian history.
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: In the ‘60s and ‘70s, Costa-Gavras knew how to make these political stories come across on screen: Z; THE CONFESSION; STATE OF SIEGE.
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