Udta Punjab

Drugs in Punjab. Four stories touch each other: Tommy Singh, a rock star lost in fame and chemicals; a woman labourer from Bihar who is never named; Preet, a doctor working in a rehabilitation centre; and Sartaj, a policeman who realises too late that his brother is an addict. Abhishek Chaubey directs. Shahid Kapoor plays Tommy, Alia Bhatt the labourer, Kareena Kapoor plays Preet, Diljit Dosanjh plays Sartaj. What happened to the film was discussed more than the film. The censor board demanded eighty nine cuts and the removal of the word Punjab from the title, on the grounds that it damaged the state's reputation. The producers went to court. The Bombay High Court overturned the board and the film was released with a single cut. The case became an important precedent on the limits of censorship in India. There was also a leak. Two days before release a high quality copy appeared online, and the production company suggested it was connected to the censorship fight. The strongest strand is Alia Bhatt's. The character has no name and no history given, and the film needs nothing else to keep her from being a statistic. Who it is for: viewers who like hard Indian social drama and multi strand narrative. Who it is not for: drug use and sexual violence are shown directly, and the Tommy Singh strand is weaker than the others.