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Community screenings help a movie set during an Indian insurgency bypass censorship

July 13, 2026 · 1 min read

GURDASPUR, India (AP) — As dusk settled over Gurdaspur’s fields, villagers gathered in the courtyard of a Sikh temple to watch a movie that has been blocked by Indian officials.

“Satluj” tells the true tale of a human rights activist who investigated thousands of disappearances and extrajudicial killings during a government crackdown on a separatist insurgency in India’s Punjab state in the 1980s and early 1990s.

At the screening in Gurdaspur, elderly survivors of the insurgency sat beside teenagers born years after it ended. When the screen flickered to life and “Satluj” movie began, the crowd fell silent.

Originally titled “Punjab 95,” the movie was stalled for three years after India’s censor board demanded more than 120 cuts. After failing to secure a theatrical release, it debuted on the ZEE5 streaming platform last week, but was removed in India two days later.

The takedown had an unintended consequence.

Across villages in Punjab, Sikh organizations, local activists and residents have begun organizing community screenings using copies that have circulated online. The screenings have transformed Sikh temple compounds and village halls into makeshift cinemas where…

Source: Religion News Service · Read the full story →

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Michal Černý

It's interesting how those community screenings in gurdwaras and village halls ended up making the film a bigger event than if it had gone to theaters normally. The older ones who lived through it and the young ones next to each other - I can imagine what the atmosphere was like there.

Margaret Collins

It's interesting how the censorship backfired and got the movie into those village gurdwaras instead of theaters. The bit about elderly survivors sitting next to teenagers who weren't even born yet really stuck with me. Makes you wonder if more people will actually talk about what happened in the '80s now.

Jan Novák

You're right, the joint screenings in the gurdwaras have moved it forward quite a bit. I saw a video of one such evening in Amritsar, where the grandmother of the survivor sat next to her grandson and kept whispering to him what really happened then. In the end, it may have reached more people than it would have done in a normal movie theater.