General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Chan Pardesi

Chann Pardesi (चंन परदेसी) is a Punjabi-language drama film directed by Chitraarth, released around 1980–1981, about an evil landlord's plan to secure an heir that tears a young couple apart and sets off a feud spanning two generations.¹^•² It won a National Film Award and is widely regarded as a landmark of Punjabi cinema; a digitally remastered version returned to cinemas on 27 May 2022.³^•¹

Key fact	Detail
Director / writers	Directed by Chitraarth; story and dialogue by Baldev Gill; screenplay by Ravinder Peepat⁴
Lead cast	Raj Babbar (Laali), Rama Vij (Kammo), Kulbhushan Kharbanda (Nek), Amrish Puri (Joginder Singh), Om Puri (Tulsi)⁴
Release year	Listings disagree: 14 November 1980 (Times of India) versus production year 1981 (BBFC)⁵^•¹
Award	National Film Award winner³
Remaster	Restored from the original 35mm negative and re-released in cinemas on 27 May 2022 with English subtitles³^•¹
Music	Songs by Mohammad Rafi and Asha Bhosle; music by Surinder Kohli, background music by Uttam Singh³^•⁶

Spoilers

Story

The film is an epic melodrama spanning two generations of feudal warfare. The peasant Nekh (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) loves Kammo (Rama Vij), but she is raped by the landlord Joginder Singh (Amrish Puri), a childless man desperate for an heir. Kammo gives birth to Singh's child after she is married to Nekh, which leads to Nekh's lifelong vendetta against Singh. Nekh becomes a bandit, repeatedly attacks Singh's house, and is arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment.²^•³

Years later, Kammo's son Laali (Raj Babbar) falls in love with Singh's daughter Channi, unaware that she is his half-sister. After Nekh's release, and complications involving Singh's blackmailing secretary Tulsi (Om Puri) and Channi's wedding, the outlaw is reconciled with his wife.² The British Board of Film Classification's advice for the 2022 re-release notes the implied rape scene, a husband's physical abuse of his wife, and a scene in which a woman, pregnant as a result of rape, runs toward a ledge saying she wants to die before a man stops her.¹

Production and crew

The film was produced by Joga Singh Cheema, Baldev Gill, and Swarn Sedha, with cinematography by Manmohan Singh and editing by Subhash Sehgal.² According to an account by Baldev Gill's collaborator, the story arrived as a half-finished typed outline covering only the first half; Gill, J S Chimma, and Yograj then wrote the remainder together through to the climax, with the collaborator sharing writing credit with Baldev Gill.⁷

All leading players were imported from Hindi cinema, a casting approach that Indiancine.ma's summary describes as inaugurating a new trend of commercially successful Bombay-based Punjabi movies as an offshoot of the Hindi industry.² Writer-director Simran Sidhu, who later led the remaster, has said that Amrish Puri, Raj Babbar, Om Puri, and Kulbhushan Kharbanda were all unknowns when the film was shot in 1979, and that the film subsequently launched their careers.³ Manmohan Singh, then completing his film course at the Film and Television Institute of India, worked as cinematographer on the film and also sang three of its songs.⁸

Reception and legacy

The film won a National Film Award, and a Punjabi cinema researcher writing at the time of the re-release described it as running successfully in Amritsar cinemas for hundreds of weeks.³^•⁸ An academic chapter on caste in Punjabi cinema identifies Chann Pardesi, together with Marhi Da Deeva (1989), as exceptions in the industry's long history that broach the subject of caste.⁹ The film's dialogues, filmed on Om Puri, are remembered in Punjab, and the dubbing rights were sold for a Hindi version titled Khoon ki Keemat, which was sold to Zee.⁸^•⁷

The 2022 remaster

The original release had used six prints; the 2022 re-release was planned for a much larger number of screens, with producers Dr Chanan Singh Sidhu and Baldev Gill presenting it as the first such remastering experiment in Punjabi cinema.¹⁰ The restoration team bought all the film's rights, including the original 35mm negative held in a state of disrepair at the National Film Archive in Pune. FilmLab Mumbai washed the fungus-damaged reels with water and chemicals, scanned them at high resolution, and restored damage frame by frame. Cinematographer Manmohan Singh returned to supervise a new digital color grade, and one of the original financiers, J S Cheema, prepared a new 5.1 surround sound mix. The remastered version carries English subtitles and was classified for UK cinema release by the BBFC in May 2022, distributed by Bollywood Films, with a stated running time of about 148 minutes.³^•¹

Running times for the film differ across databases: the BBFC lists approximately 148 minutes, the Times of India and BookMyShow list 1 hour 42 minutes, and Rotten Tomatoes lists 2 hours 27 minutes, while the Indiancine.ma print runs 2:26:26.¹^•⁵^•¹¹^•² A sequel focusing on the story's third generation, set four decades after the original, was reported to be in development by Simran Sidhu in 2022.³

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Indian films (individual works) › Films in other Indian languages

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

Notice something wrong?