Taking some inspiration from the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 in India, which happened in retaliation against the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the director Ali Abbas Zafar’s “Jogi” follows its titular character (Diljit Dosanjh) as he attempts to shepherd his friends and family to safety. How can the pair despise how they are dehumanized when they treat Gabe like a dog? From a film in which the underrepresented are branded with bar codes emerges a fight not just for freedom but also a struggle for one’s principles amid unprincipled people. It’s also the moral quandary caused by Sarah and Jarret, who are keeping a Volunteer named Gabe (Michael Raymond-James) chained to the floor of their barn as a prisoner. The major draw of the director William Sullivan’s dystopian and post-apocalyptic tale, however, isn’t wholly the frenetic action. In the film’s suspenseful opening, featuring kinetic camerawork and close-quarters gunplay, Sarah fights two Volunteers in the woods to save Arjay ( Brandon Perea), a young gay Filipino man. Rebelling against them are a couple of outsiders - Sarah (Sarah Wharton) and her husband, Jarret (Jarret Kerr, the film’s co-writer) - who have stationed themselves on the Canadian border as an underground railroad for underrepresented groups to escape the country. They spend their days hunting and killing immigrants, queer people and people of color. The harmony of this band of outsiders is disrupted by the arrival of the defiant Arjay (Brandon Perea) who is branded because he is gay and on the run from a deadly confrontation with the militia.In the near-future, a far-right group known as the Volunteers has taken over America. Sarah (Sarah Wharton) is the badass leader who with husband Jarret (Kerr) has suffered gutting loss once life as everyone knew it changed. Her husband David (Nick Westrate) struggles to hide his fears. Each character is effectively developed and we learn their stories through flashbacks.There is Zabi (the terrific Nadine Malouf), a Muslim-American who survived the deadly bombing of her mosque and who is the sole branded member of the foursome.

Four survivors are holed up in a large farmhouse close to the Canadian border as they await instruction about when it is safe for them to flee. In Sullivan’s film, the insurrection is ongoing: the armed militants conduct their purges by setting up roadblocks and communicating via radio to assemble hunting parties.

“American Insurrection” is not to be confused with the recent Frontline documentary of the same title.

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