Director: Nag Ashwin
Kalki 2898-AD stages a sprawling mythological science-fiction epic in a crumbling far-future city where an ancient prophecy is about to catch up with the present.
What is Kalki 2898-AD about?
Centuries from now, the ruined city of Kasi has become a last refuge of ordinary life on a planet worn down by war and scarcity. Its residents scrape by under harsh conditions until the long-foretold arrival of a final avatar of Lord Vishnu begins to reshape everything around them. As old legends collide with a hostile, technologically advanced order determined to prevent that arrival, the fate of Kasi's people becomes tangled with a much larger conflict between darkness and renewal. The film moves between grounded survival drama and large-scale mythic spectacle, folding ancient Hindu cosmology into a dystopian setting filled with fortified strongholds, ruling elites, and a scattered resistance. Director Nag Ashwin builds the story as the opening chapter of a much bigger saga, introducing a wide cast of characters whose paths toward Kasi and its prophecy only partly resolve by the credits.
Cast & crew
The ensemble spans several generations of Indian cinema, with Amitabh Bachchan, Prabhas, Deepika Padukone, and Kamal Haasan anchoring the lead roles, joined by Saswata Chatterjee, Shobana, Rajendra Prasad, and Pasupathy in key supporting parts.
Context & significance
Kalki 2898-AD is a 2024 Indian science-fiction epic running 180 minutes, blending action, adventure, drama, fantasy, and thriller elements across a scale rarely attempted in Telugu-language cinema. Its combination of mythological source material with a post-apocalyptic setting places it alongside a recent run of big-budget pan-Indian productions aimed at audiences well beyond a single regional market. The production also draws heavily on extensive visual-effects work to render its ruined future city and its contrasting flashes of ancient myth, a technical undertaking that places it among the most expensive films made in India to date.
Where & how to watch
Kalki 2898-AD is available on K-Time with both Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, through an interface built in Farsi for Persian-speaking viewers around the world. The film's page can be read by anyone; watching the film itself requires logging into a K-Time account.