Amar Singh Chamkila

A film set in Punjab and adapted from a real life. Chamkila worked in a sock factory. He wrote songs and gave them to other singers; one day he went on stage himself. His voice and his words caught on. Within a short time he became the most booked performer in the region; he played several weddings a day and his calendar was full months ahead. The words are the matter. He described rural Punjabi life very openly; sex, infidelity and drink go in directly, and an enormous audience listened. The same words made him a target. Religious groups, political organisations and fellow musicians wanted him silent; threatening letters arrived. Amarjot is beside him. They sing together on stage and they marry. From there the film runs in two directions at once. On one side the rise; on the other a narrowing circle and cancelled bookings. In 1988, as they step out of a car before a performance, they are shot. Chamkila, Amarjot and two musicians are killed; the case was never solved. What the narrative is interested in is not music but demand: the film shows that the crowd listening to him was also the crowd ashamed of him, and clears nobody. The telling is mixed in technique. Real photographs, animated sections, archive footage and song sequences are folded together. The music is by A. R. Rahman, with lyrics by Irshad Kamil. Diljit Dosanjh takes the lead and sings the songs himself. The production was released on Netflix on the twelfth of April 2024 and reached the upper part of the service's global chart. Diljit Dosanjh, Parineeti Chopra and Anjum Batra are in the cast. Imtiaz Ali directed and co-wrote. Who it is for: anyone interested in music biographies and Punjabi culture. Who it is not for: anyone unprepared for the content of the lyrics; the film does not censor them and gives them literally in the subtitles.