Strong Son was my favourite film at TIFF ’26 and , arguably, the best Canadian feature I saw at the festival. It pains me that Ian Bawa’s remarkable debut wasn’t part of the Critics Choice conversation.
I have never seen parental enmeshment depicted with such devastating clarity. Harvinder “Harvey” Singh has built his entire identity around earning his father’s approval. He lifts weights. He watches wrestling. He becomes physically imposing because to his father, Jagdeep, strength is the ultimate expression of masculinity. But Harvey is emotionally drowning, and Bawa makes the brilliant decision to let him drown on screen.
Harvey cries constantly. He has panic attacks and public breakdowns. He cannot grieve his mother or admit how overwhelmed he has become because vulnerability is treated as failure. When his father responds to his tears by comparing him dismissively to his mother, an entire history of this family suddenly reveals itself. Harvey may be physically strong, but emotionally he remains that shy, overweight child who was bullied and never felt truly seen.
Mandeep Sodhi gives an extraordinary performance. Often working with little dialogue, he makes Harvey’s exhaustion almost physically palpable. This was my first time seeing Sodhi, and he completely floored me. It is the kind of vulnerable, unguarded performance that deserves significantly more attention.
Visually, Strong Son is equally impressive. Markus Henkel’s cinematography shifts beautifully between intimate realism and retro wrestling imagery, using grainy, analog textures and the heightened visual language of old televised wrestling to externalize Harvey’s inherited conception of manhood. Even the score plays tricks on us. What initially resembles an uplifting hymn gradually curdles into something ominous, with sustained, dissonant strings that scrape and tremble rather than resolve.
And that is ultimately what makes Strong Son heartbreaking. Harvey may begin healing, but his father doesn’t fundamentally change. Their love is genuine, and so is the damage.
