Director Ian Bawa's debut feature "Strong Son" premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival, expanding on his 2020 short film of the same name that starred his real-life father, Jagdeep Singh Bawa. The project carries added poignancy because Bawa's father died of a sudden heart attack just three weeks after that short's TIFF premiere, followed by the death of his mother, Pritam Bawa, from breast cancer years later, meaning the feature grew directly out of Bawa's personal grief rather than remaining a purely fictional exercise.

The film follows Harvey Singh, a South Asian bodybuilder whose mental health deteriorates as he cares for his ailing, emotionally demanding father, drawing heavily on toxic masculinity within South Asian culture and Bawa's own decade of caregiving before his father's death. Much of the dialogue, including a recreated emergency call to paramedics, is taken directly from Bawa's real experiences. Lead actor Mandeep Sodhi is a bodybuilder-turned-actor, while Amrit Parbhakar, who plays the father, joined just a week before filming after another actor dropped out and had to work around having gone blind two years earlier.