Take Neeru Bajwa, for instance: She’s been part of some of the biggest hits in recent times, but has barely had more than a scene or two to herself in any one of them. The idea of a strong female character, in short, is almost non-existent in the modern Punjabi commercial film. With the female lead often relegated to playing a distant second fiddle to these big-ticket pop stars as they sing about booze and big cars and dance in lush fields or neat-looking Canadian suburbs, most Punjabi films would spectacularly fail the Bechdel test. There’s another leitmotif to these films: The Jat boy, almost invariably, is played by a successful pop star.

There are minor tweaks here and there: An organic farming field sometimes replaces the mustard field. Yet it is true that the plots of an overwhelmingly large number of Punjabi films are a variant of this: Jat boy in quest of fortune and fame goes to Canada/Australia, falls in love with Punjabi girl in Toronto/Sydney or at the airport immigration counter, overcomes initial casual racist spurns by the girl/scheming relatives and once professional success and personal bliss are achieved, comes back to his village of mustard fields to live happily ever after. In a review on CNN-News18, film critic Divya Pal called it “incredibly moving'. Ardaas was favourably reviewed by critics in the national media. Set in rural Punjab, it is a deftly made film on the tricky subject of spirituality. Then there’s singing sensation-turned-actor Gippy Grewal’s directional debut, Ardaas.

Hindi punjabi movies 2012