11/08/2026 - Gurvinder Singh’s drama weaves together three solemn, yet engaging, tales about present-day Punjab, reckoning with its history before and after the 1947 Partition

In 1990s world cinema, there was an abundance of “network” narratives, referring to dramas composed of braided stories connecting a large ensemble of characters. Indian Punjabi director Gurvinder Singh’s latest feature, Rehmat, premiering in Locarno’s International Competition, is a slight reminder of this trend, although its expansive narrative derives from the director adapting several short stories by a celebrated compatriot of his, author Ajeet Cour. The feature’s three parts muse on the ongoing legacy of the 1947 Partition of Punjab, where Sikhs and Hindus in India were separated from the much larger Muslim community in Pakistan; in spite of Singh’s occasional timidity and reductiveness as he tries to dramatise the continually brewing conflict, his work impressively captures and evokes the political tensions impacting all of South Asia today.

Singh’s screenplay deceives us somewhat by putting the two shortest, yet most dramatic, stories at the film’s start, before settling into a surprising detour with a character that first seems to be a comic afterthought, but who eventually becomes the movie’s emotional and dramatic fulcrum. A welcome introductory note at the start mentions Indian Punjab’s collapse into civil unrest during the 1980s – where militant Sikhs fought for their own independent state – and the occasional reemergence of sectarian violence today; the first story provides an instance of this, following the wounded Sikh militant Balwinder (Harwinder Aujla), who must hide and seek shelter at the home of a family whose son was previously killed by the rebel group he’s part of. In the succeeding chapter, we see the experience from the perspective of Balwinder’s own family, particularly its impact on his bright and sensitive son Harman (Jasmanpreet Singh), who is beginning to fail in school. Although it is related with patience and poise, one could still accuse the director of being too discreet with some of the grisly details of the militancy – we could use some further exposition and imagery of it in a blunt, yet direct, way.

The film seems committed to this austere path, until a tonal transition that hits like a clear ray of light – one indeed provided by a character that, at first, coyly refers to himself as “God”. This is Rashid (Naseeruddin Shah), a descendent of a Muslim family that fled immediately following the Partition, who’s belatedly come from Manchester, UK, to return to his heritage after he’s been diagnosed with terminal cancer. With the stories connected by the fact that Rashid is first coincidentally hosted by Balwinder’s family, we can see how different his subsequent life in the diaspora has made him from the locals; through the endearing detail of the beige-coloured, Marshall amp-branded Bluetooth speaker unpacked on his desk, and his raffish, near-bohemian style, we can feel he’s an aged “child of the 60s” – the beneficiary of enlightened social changes in the UK. From his initial base at Balwinder’s family, he later finds the palatial home that his father, Rehmat (a name meaning “compassion” in Punjab and Arabic), built, which has sat deserted amidst urban Punjab’s own economic and social decline.

In the 2020s, with the likes of Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light and Saim Sadiq’s Joyland, South Asian cinema has enjoyed a notable arthouse renaissance; Rehmat’s style – with its sometimes mystifying, slow-paced tracking shots exploring the spaces the characters reside in – feels too stiff and sober to connect with audiences in the same way. Still, its engagement with Punjabi politics is utterly adroit, and provides new perspectives and comparisons to other regions’ ongoing crises of national self-determination.

Rehmat is a co-production by India and France, staged by Vahao Studio and Pavo Films.