Dear Jassi. 2023. Directed by Tarsem Singh Dhandwar

Film

No upcoming events

Dear Jassi. 2023. India/Canada/USA. Directed by Tarsem Singh Dhandwar. Courtesy of Wakaoo Films

Dear Jassi. 2023. India/Canada/USA. Directed by Tarsem Singh Dhandwar. Screenplay by Amit Rai. With Pavia Sidhu, Yugam Sood. In Punjabi; English subtitles. DCP. 132 min.

Tarsem returns to his Indian roots with this devastating true story of transnational honor killing. In 1990s Punjab, a young Sikh woman’s forbidden romance with a rickshaw driver triggers a family crisis that spans continents and culminates in tragedy. Shot in India with largely local crews, the film represents a significant departure from the director’s established aesthetic of baroque maximalism, employing a more restrained visual approach suited to its documentary origins. The narrative’s stark emotional terrain—navigating caste, diaspora, and patriarchal violence—demonstrates Tarsem’s range beyond the fantasy worlds that defined his earlier career, while his formal command transforms a sensationalized news story into a study in the deadly persistence of tradition.

This film accompanies Tarsem.

Past events

Sat, May 2, 7:00 p.m.

MoMA, Floor T2, Theater 2

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2
Mon, Apr 27, 6:30 p.m.

Followed by a conversation with Tarsem

MoMA, Floor T1, Theater 1

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 1

Licensing

If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA’s collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).

MoMA licenses archival audio and select out of copyright film clips from our film collection. At this time, MoMA produced video cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. All requests to license archival audio or out of copyright film clips should be addressed to Scala Archives at [email protected]. Motion picture film stills cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For access to motion picture film stills for research purposes, please contact the Film Study Center at [email protected]. For more information about film loans and our Circulating Film and Video Library, please visit https://www.moma.org/research/circulating-film.

If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication, please email [email protected]. If you would like to publish text from MoMA’s archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to [email protected].