Director: Abhilash Joshiy
Every town has someone who runs it from the shadows, and in Kotha that person is Kannan — until a humiliated police officer starts quietly plotting to bring back the one man who once ruled the streets before him.
What is King Of Kotha about?
Kotha is a town shaped by crime, and Kannan sits at the top of that hierarchy, controlling it through fear and favors. When circling inspector CI Shahul Haasan is publicly humiliated by Kannan and his crew, he doesn't retaliate directly. Instead, he sets a longer plan in motion, working to draw a former gangster known as Raju back into a town he'd left behind. That return unsettles the balance Kannan has spent years building, forcing old rivalries and buried histories to resurface. As alliances shift and past grievances collide with present ambition, Kotha's underworld heads toward a reckoning that neither Kannan nor Raju can fully control.
Cast & crew
Dulquer Salmaan takes on the dual challenge of playing both the town's ruling gangster and the man drawn back to challenge him, with Aishwarya Lekshmi and Shabeer Kallarakkal in significant supporting roles. Prasanna, Nyla Usha, Chemban Vinod Jose, Gokul Suresh, and Shammi Thilakan fill out a wide ensemble spanning police, rival factions, and the town itself.
Context & significance
Director Abhilash Joshiy's 2023 crime-drama leans into a sprawling, multi-generational gang story, tracing how power in Kotha has been won, lost, and contested across different eras of the same underworld. Rather than framing the conflict as a simple good-versus-bad standoff, the film treats Kannan's rule and Raju's return as two chapters of the same violent lineage, each shaped by the town's history as much as by personal ambition. That structural choice — a crime saga stretched across time rather than a single confrontation — is part of what set the film apart at release.
Where & how to watch
King of Kotha is available on K-Time with both Farsi dubbing and Persian subtitles, and the page can be browsed freely without logging in. Watching the film requires a K-Time account, part of a Persian-language streaming experience built for the Iranian diaspora.