After years of low budgets, Punjabi cinema in India boomed from around 2010. Comedies such as Jatt and Juliet (2012) and Carry On Jatta (2012), period films such as Angrej (2015) and love stories such as Qismat (2018) starred singers turned actors, Diljit Dosanjh, Gippy Grewal and Ammy Virk among them, and played to the diaspora in Canada, Britain and Australia as much as at home.
In Pakistan, The Legend of Maula Jatt (2022), a remake of the 1979 classic, became the highest-grossing Pakistani film ever.
More cinema and theatre
Lahore made films before Bombay was the capital of Indian cinema, and after 1947 became the heart of Pakistani and Punjabi film.
The Punjabi action film that made Sultan Rahi a legend, and whose 2022 remake became the highest-grossing Pakistani film ever.
From Prithviraj Kapoor to Yash Chopra, many of the founders of Hindi cinema came from the Punjab and the frontier.
Travelling comedians and mimics who played at weddings, fairs and courts, mocking landlords, priests and officials.
The dramatist who took political plays to the villages of Indian Punjab, known to millions as Bhai Manna Singh.
The Lahore theatre company founded under military rule, whose play Bulha brought Bulleh Shah to the stage.
The film that revived Punjabi cinema in India, a family drama of faith starring Prithviraj Kapoor.
Lahore's great film of Waris Shah's Heer, with Firdous and Ijaz and songs by Noor Jehan.
A serious Punjabi film about a landlord, his tenant and the wrong done to a woman, made by a team of art-cinema talents.