For decades, since the Green Revolution, the image of the Panjab region, courtesy commercial Hindi cinema, has been one of flowering fields and rainbow riots, stereotypes that were easier to dig into than dismantle, complicate, and question. Some filmmakers, though, have been questioning this easy narrative, probing the trauma at the heart region – from partition, to Operation Blue Star, to the drug crisis. With shows like Kohrra and films like Satluj, even the mainstream is responding. Incest, infertility, murder, moral exhaustion, and catatonia plague these films. Panjab Noir, like the noir genre – which is tied to atmosphere rather than narrative – is an attempt to slip under the bleakness of those lands.
