Maachis

The film is set in the Punjab. The time is the eighties. An insurgency is going on in the region. At the centre of the account is Kripal Singh Pali. Pali is a young man who plays hockey. His fiancée is called Virender Kaur. The lives of the two of them are overturned one day. Veeran’s brother Jaswant is taken away by the police. Jaswant is tortured in custody and a crime is pinned on him. That event pushes young people towards violence. The film takes up state repression, revenge and the radicalisation of the young together. The account covers the period after the events of 1984. Om Puri, Tabu and Chandrachur Singh take the leads, with Jimmy Shergill and Kulbhushan Kharbanda also in the cast, in Gulzar’s Indian film of 1996.