Republic

Republic is a 2021 Telugu political drama written and directed by Deva Katta and produced by JB Entertainments and Zee Studios. Sai Tej plays an idealistic IAS officer taking on a corrupt political system, with Aishwarya Rajesh, Ramya Krishna and Jagapathi Babu. Mani Sharma composed the music, M. Sukumar shot it and Praveen K. L. edited it. It was released in cinemas on 1 October 2021.

What the story is about

For over forty years, fish farms on Telleru Lake, once one of India’s biggest freshwater lakes, have been poisoning it, and most of them belong to the powerful “Visakha” Vani. Panja Abhiram, a brilliant young man from Eluru, has grown up disgusted by corruption, starting with his own father, a government official. He wins a seat at MIT, but after his father takes part in election rigging, he decides to go into the system and change it from within, and prepares for the civil services.

Along the way he meets Myra, an NRI searching for her missing brother, and an auto driver and his father fighting Vani for justice, while Vani makes her own son Chief Minister and becomes the state’s kingmaker. When Abhi, now an officer, sets out to clean up the lake, he finds out how far the system will go to protect itself. The film is the third in what Deva Katta calls a quadrilogy about a bureaucrat’s view of society.

Cast and crew

• Sai Tej as Panja Abhiram
• Aishwarya Rajesh as Myra Hansen
• Ramya Krishna as “Visakha” Vani
• Jagapathi Babu as Panja Dasarath, Abhi’s father

Writer and director: Deva Katta. Production: JB Entertainments and Zee Studios. Music: Mani Sharma. Cinematography: M. Sukumar. Editing: Praveen K. L.

Making and release

Launched in early 2020, the film began shooting in mid-2020, paused for the pandemic and resumed in December 2020. Nivetha Pethuraj was first cast and later replaced by Aishwarya Rajesh. The title was announced on 25 January 2021, and filming wrapped in February 2021 after 64 days. A planned 4 June 2021 release was pushed back by the second wave of COVID-19.

Reviews

Republic was very well reviewed. Srinivas Kanchobhotla of Idlebrain called it “outstanding”, a “social treatise about the systemic malaise”. Ram Venkat Srikar of Cinema Express found it “well-crafted”, “a smart construction on the idea of corruption”, and compared it with The Parallax View. Neeshita Nyayapati of the Times of India gave it 3 out of 5, praising Tej and calling Ramya Krishna “delicious as the baddie”. Sangeetha Devi Dundoo of The Hindu called it a “gripping political drama” whose strength lies in its grey characters, and Haricharan Pudipeddi of the Hindustan Times felt Tej was aptly cast. We have not found box-office figures from a named outlet.

Where to watch Republic

We do not have a confirmed streaming listing for Republic on file. If we verify one with a platform, it will appear on this page.

Sources: the Wikipedia article on Republic and the reviews it cites, linked above; our own cast and crew records.