Strong Son

For all the hours he spends in the gym pumping iron and working hard to transform his physical form into a well-honed ideal of power and masculinity, the bodybuilder hero of Ian Bawa’s Strong Son can never feel strong enough.

Instead, Harvinder “Harvey” Singh (Mandeep Sodhi) is trapped in a quagmire of anxiety and insecurity. Worse yet, this painful experience has intensified since he returned to his family home in Winnipeg to take care of his aging father, Jagdeep (Amrit Parbhakar). 

Stressed out by his caregiver role and further undermined by Jagdeep’s very vocal opinions about what a man ought to do and be, Harvey is barely hanging on. If Harvey has any hope of decreasing the frequency of his teary public breakdowns, it may depend on his burgeoning connection to his co-worker Caitlin (Michaela Kurimsky of Sweet Angel Baby, TIFF ’24) and his promising foray into pro wrestling, Jagdeep’s favourite sport.

With his perceptive and affecting debut feature, Bawa takes several confident steps deeper into the explorations of masculinity, identity, and Sikh family dynamics that he began with his shorts Strong Son (TIFF ’20) and The Best (TIFF ’24), both of which premiered at the Festival. Sodhi — who served as Bawa’s on-screen alter ego in those similarly autobiographical films — again brings a keen vulnerability and a bounty of nervous energy to the central character, a man struggling to discover a new way of defining himself and managing the welter of emotions he feels inside.

JASON ANDERSON