‘Strong Son’ explores masculinity and mental health through a South Asian lens

A few weeks after being released from his World Wrestling Entertainment contract, Calgary’s Raj Dhesi was reading the script for “Strong Son,” with a role that seemed too good to be true.

Dhesi, who won the WWE championship in 2017 under the ring name Jinder Mahal, had been with the pro wrestling promotion for a total of 12 years when he was let go in April 2024.

Although Dhesi planned to keep wrestling with independent promoters, he was also looking to expand his horizons.

“My manager sent me the script, and in it I see there’s a South Asian professional wrestler. I had to ask him, my manager, was this role written for me? Like, did this all come together since I left WWE? He said ‘no, no,'” Dhesi said in a recent video call.

“What a coincidence that the character was also a South Asian professional wrestler.”

Dhesi was so enthusiastic that he actually sent in two audition tapes for the film, one for the main character Harvey, a grief-stricken body builder and one as Nav, a surprisingly caring professional wrestler who is Harvey’s gym buddy.

Writer/director Ian Bawa, who is from Winnipeg, was impressed by the performances on both tapes.

“He was super good, but we were like ‘he kind of feels like Nav because I feel like I’d be intimidated by this guy because he looks like he should be the antagonist,’ but I never wrote him to be that,” said Bawa, who added that Dhesi’s first question to him when they met was that he felt like the character Nav was written for him.

“And I said, ‘Thank God, because we were gonna ask you if you’d want to be Nav, because you kind of fit that a bit more.'”

“Strong Son” follows Harvinder, played by Mandeep Sodhi, who has anglicized his name to Harvey, as he returns to his childhood home to become his father’s primary caregiver as the older man’s health declines. It’s screening at the Toronto International Film Festival this week.

Both Dhesi and Bawa feel that “Strong Son” has important things to say about male relationships and mental health, especially for South Asian men. The film was originally a short that premiered at TIFF in 2020, and Bawa joked that the feature-length version of it is the finale of his “sad dad” trilogy that includes the short films “The Best” and “My Son Went Quiet.”

“I lived at home till I was in my 30s, not because I wanted to, but because I took care of my dad. Eventually, I had to leave because of my mental health,” said Bawa. “Even when I moved out, I kept having to stay there, take him to doctors appointments, all that. There is this aspect of South Asian culture that you don’t abandon your parents.

“I was suffering at the same time, I was crying, I was having panic attacks all the time, and I still do. For me, there hasn’t been that many films about that.”

The six-foot-five, 238-pound Dhesi, said that he liked the inversion of expectations when his character Nav first appears in the film. He could be the gym bully, an intimidating and toxic figure, but instead he’s warm and empathetic.

“Yes, he’s big, he’s strong, he’s a wrestler, he’s this, he’s that, but at the same time, he’s open to the struggle, like he understands the struggle very well, and he wants to help out Harvey,” said Dhesi. “(Nav) sees the relationship between the father and the son, which is another real issue in South Asian culture, this idea of living up to our dad’s vision that he had for us.”

“Strong Son” screens Monday, Sept. 14 and Wednesday, Sept. 16 at TIFF.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 14, 2026.