Satluj review: the quiet age behind a disappearance

The film starts with a few disclaimers - a thanking note to the Governments of Punjab and Haryana along with a remembrance note for Surjit Pattar Singh. One specific undeniable fact of the film remains that the attempt to represent the colloquiality of Punjab was satisfactorily executed.

The Gurbani verse by Guru Gobind Singh that the character of Jaswant Singh Khalra (played by Diljit dosanjh) is seen reciting-''Deh Shiva Var more eha, Shubh Karman te kabh ho na daro'' (Bless me lord, so I do not fear doing and standing by what is right), speaks for itself. Artists like Geetika Vidya Ohlyan (Paramjeet Kaur) and Kanwaljeet Singh (Inspector Bitta) successfully delivered and contributed to this aspect in the film. Honey Trehan's account of human rights activist Jaswant Singh Khalra is not driven by overwhelming confrontations or heroic declarations as much as it is by records, registers and routines. It repeatedly returns to the spaces where the state appears least theatrical—government offices, official files, cremation grounds and registers in Municipal Offices.

The result is a political thriller that resists the temptation to become either a courtroom drama or a conventional biopic. Instead, it unfolds as an investigation into how institutions function when lines between accountability and duty begin to blur.

A film in the form of archive

Much has already been said about the film's difficult journey to audiences. A five year long wait, changes to its title and debates around certification have become inseparable from discussions about Satluj, (earlier to be released as Punjab 95). Uncertain stalling of the shoot, a three year long battle with the CBFC (Central Board of Film Certification) and finally the shadow ban.

Yet, once the film begins, those conversations gradually recede, but begin to make sense. The discomfort that is ushered in by the flat dissection of the anatomy of state power on the screen, can often put cheerleaders of many democracies in question.

A more fundamental question however could be: can the film sustain itself through its own cinematic language rather than the weight of the history it revisits?

For the most part, it can.

The screenplay places its faith in accumulation rather than revelation. The film does not choose to show only corpses, it shows documents.

Many have also drawn parallels between Satluj and Gulzar's Maachis. Both plots revolve around Kharkus (as punjabi militants were called), a word used several times in the film and has a longer history than one would assume. Earlier used for freedom fighters and then for militants, it once stood for defiance against the system- Bold and Brave.

Gulzar's Maachis however focuses on a different aspect of the militancy altogether, but addresses the same reality. Anuj Kumar in The Hindu also goes a step further to mention the cinematic rhetoric of casting Kanwaljeet Singh (Inspector Bitta) and SM Zameer ( CM Anant Singh) in roles that remind of the similar character arcs in Maachis. A revisit to the similar trajectory through a shared on-screen memory.

The gaze : persistence becomes performance

In the film Khalra's search for answers does not progress through spectacular discoveries but through a quiet search or patient observation. Every register examined, every discrepancy noticed and every unanswered question adds another layer to the film's growing unease and disturbance, from cremation grounds to Municipal Offices. There is an understated confidence in this approach. Instead of manufacturing suspense, the narrative allows facts to gather their own emotional weight. That choice also reshapes the idea of heroism in the film.

Diljit Dosanjh plays Khalra with remarkable restraint, but the performance is notable for reasons that extend beyond understatement. A cold undeterred gaze devoid of hyper sensational activism yet fighting against the dehumanisation of civil lives, gives a peek into the moral conviction growing through persistence. Honey Trehan deliberately avoids treating his lead actor as a star, especially through a cinematic transformation. There are very few moments designed to celebrate the protagonist or elevate him through cinematic convention. Khalra is presented not as an exceptional figure standing above the rhetoric but as a citizen who refuses to give up.

In doing so, the film distances itself from the familiar grammar of the political biopic, where conviction often arrives wrapped in soaring speeches and emphatic background scores. Diljit understands that. His expressions rarely seek attention; instead, they register the gradual burden of feeling that the truth carries consequences long before it delivers justice.

The supporting performances contribute to that atmosphere by resisting easy binaries. The character of Paramjit Kaur (played by Geetika Vidya Ohlyan) also portrays a near to perfect balance of internal turmoil, righteousness and courage to stand by her husband. The film rarely reduces its world to heroic victims and monstrous villains. The more unsettling suggestion is that systems endure because responsibility becomes fragmented. Decisions pass through offices, signatures and procedures until accountability itself becomes difficult to locate.

That idea is reflected in the film's visual language as well.

Trehan and his cinematographer show a marked reluctance to sensationalise anything in the film. The camera often lingers not on acts of brutality but on their aftermath—empty rooms, corpses, hesitant conversations, prolonged silences and faces searching for certainty where it clearly does not exist. The effect is less visceral than cumulative. Fear enters the frame, until it begins to feel embedded within everyday life.

It is here that Satluj distinguishes itself from many political dramas centred on historical trauma. The film appears less interested in recreating horror and dramatising sentiments than in examining its investigative rhythm. Violence is not presented as an extraordinary interruption to governance; or answer to militant activities, it increasingly resembles another procedure within it. The procedure to rise to power. The promotions within the ranks.

That observation gives the film an emotional texture. The language is closer to Gulzar. The tension arises not from wondering whether something terrible will happen, but from recognising how people react to the desensitisation of their loss.

The Subtle background beats

The sound design reinforces that mood with admirable discipline. Silence is allowed to occupy space without immediately being filled by music. Conversations end abruptly, but pauses linger. There are moments when the absence of sound communicates more than dialogue. Rather than directing the audience's emotions, the film often asks viewers to sit with uncertainty. The film features a Shabad (a Sikh devotional hymn) towards the climax, which is widely praised as beautifully woven into the emotional conclusion of the film. Besides this another Shabad and a couplet by Bhagat Kabir, recorded in Guru Granth Sahib keeps repeating at at sensitive scene in the film

“Sooraa so pehichaanee-ai jo lade deen ke haet.Purjaa purjaa kat mare kabahoo na chhaadai khet.” (meaning: A true hero or warrior is recognised as one who fights to protect the righteous, the weak, and the oppressed, Even if their body is cut and hacked into pieces, they will never leave the battlefield or abandon their righteous duty). It reminds the audience of the disturbing reality of how trajectories of militancy get shaped by the language of power, differently across times. The same verse was found in Field Marshal Sam Makenshaw (Played by Vicky Kaushal) reminding his Sikh Regiment in 1971, in the movie Sam Bahadur. A difference in cinematic language of translating courage but the same stream of faith shaping alternate ground realities. A reality built around sacrifice.

Archive against forgetting

Satluj is not entirely free of the burdens that accompany fact-based cinema.

Its commitment to documenting historical details occasionally slows its movement. Certain passages seem more invested in ensuring that every important development is recorded than in allowing scenes to breathe. The film understands the responsibility of representing a contested past, but there are moments when that responsibility weighs heavily on its narrative flow and the clusters seem to narrow.

A related limitation lies in its depiction of the world beyond the investigation. Punjab appears primarily through the lens of surveillance, fear and institutional violence. While that perspective is integral to the story being told, one occasionally wishes for a fuller sense of the ordinary lives interrupted by these events. Everyday rhythms—homes, neighbourhoods, friendships and shared routines—remain somewhat underexplored. Their presence might have sharpened the emotional cost of what the film aims to document. It could have been spaced out for the frames to breathe. What Satluj consistently avoids, however, is the comfort of resolution.

Many films built around real events move steadily towards closure, inviting audiences to believe that uncovering truth inevitably produces justice. Trehan resists that. Here, evidence does not automatically translate into accountability, and memory offers no guarantee. In the later bits, the film leaves viewers with an uneasy recognition that history can be acknowledged without fully resolving trauma. That refusal to simplify the relationship between truth and justice gives the narrative a quiet moral force.

Perhaps that is also why the film's title acquires significance beyond the circumstances that produced it.

''A river carries memory differently from an archive. Documents can be altered, misplaced or withheld; landscapes continue to bear witness.'' Whether intended or not, Satluj ultimately becomes less about a single individual than about the fragile process through which societies remember what institutions try to erase. Here it was 25000 corpses.

The film also raises a broader question about political cinema itself. How should such stories be told? Through spectacle that demands immediate outrage or through observation that slowly reveals the mechanics of power? The dance and trance of democracies?

It may leave some viewers expecting greater dramatic intensity, but it also grants the film a seriousness that feels earned rather than performed.

In the end, Satluj succeeds not because it recounts a difficult chapter of history, but because it pays close attention to the quiet processes that led to its archive even existing. “If I take asylum, this mission dies” - this alone helps us understand that power is rarely exercised only in moments of visible confrontation. More often, it resides in routine. Families that asked for nothing but a “death certificate” from the state at the face of extrajudicial killings of people across Punjab found themselves being labeled as architects of a ‘low intensity proxy war’. That insight gives the film its lasting resonance. At the end one realizes what Jaswant meant when he said “Sadan Kahi bhi ho,khet toh kisaan ka apna hi hota hai”. (No matter where the rot is, the farm will always belong to the farmer).It echoes throughout the despair of each scene.

Long after individual scenes fade, what remains is not simply the memory of one man's investigation but his will to Challenge the darkness.