Republic is a 2021 Indian Telugu-language Political Social Drama film written and directed by Deva Katta, and produced by JB Entertainments and Zee Studios. The film stars Sai Tej, Aishwarya Rajesh, Ramya Krishna, and Jagapathi Babu. The plot follows Panja Abhiram (Tej), an IAS officer who tackles the corruption in the political system and the administrative machinery. This film is 3rd film in Deva Katta's Quadrilogy of society which shows a bureaucrat's perspective on society.
Principal photography of the film began in mid-2020 and ended in February 2021, after being briefly suspended by the COVID-19 pandemic. Mani Sharma scored the film while the cinematography and editing are performed by M. Sukumar and Praveen K. L. respectively. Republic was released theatrically on 1 October 2021 to critical acclaim but was unsuccessful at the box office.
Plot
In 1970, Telleru Lake is one of the biggest freshwater lakes in India and is a pivotal lake for fishing and farming. For over 40 years, the lake has been built on fishing farms mainly owned by 'Visakha' Vani while simultaneously polluting the lake alongside.
The story shifts to Panja Abhiram, a smart and impious youth from Eluru that likes society to be truthful and honest after experiencing corruption within his own family with his father Panja Dashrath being a corrupt government official, which causes him to dislike his father. With his high scoring in various exams, he gets a seat at MIT. However, due to his father participating in an election rig, he decides to dive more into the political system to change it.
Abhi simultaneously meets Myra Hansen, who is an NRI trying to search for her missing brother Dr. Varun Hansen, who is known to have had an interaction with a local goon named Guna. Meanwhile, founding a new party and making a clean sweep in the election, Vani makes her son Indukuri Vishnu Vardan the next Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, gaining the image of kingmaker. Later, Abhi meets Mani, an auto driver, and his father trying to fight for justice against Vani.
Meanwhile, Abhi and Myra come to know that Varun has been found dead, but they do not get any support from the police, leaving it to a dead end. After passing the UPSC exam, Abhi heads to his interview, but after a PTSD episode on the train, he ends up seeing Mani being killed by Guna, who is under Vani's orders. Abhi, after seeing all of this heads, to his interview but ends up not getting selected due to his mentality. However, a few days later, he ends up as a topper in the exam, which became condoned by everyone, including himself. Abhi then finds out that he was selected by the UPSC board as an experiment of implementing him as the supreme authority of the district and that he cannot be interfered with by any politician in the state.
After Abhi starts his job, he sets out to try and find Guna, who has an encounter order against him, and he manages to kill him. However, at the same spot, they find Myra unconscious. Abhi rushes her to the hospital to find that she has been brutally raped and is close to being killed by Guna due to Varun's research. He then enquires about the children to find out that they have died and have still not been found. Abhi, filled with rage, decides to address the media that the system is why things are occurring like this. He gets the video evidence of Varun and finds out about how Varun is a neurological professor and doctor. The story then dives into a flashback on how Varun's wife Radhika dies of a neurological disease that was caused by the fish in Telleru Lake. He then sees more people affected and plans to research what happened and comes to the conclusion that it was contaminated by Vani's fish farms. An enraged Abhi gets his father and the health officer both suspended for faking reports about the lake.
Abhi, with this information, visits Vani to come to an understanding by removing her farms and all the construction on the lake. Vani tries to understand him by telling her journey. He cannot make any change in society; earlier, being a daughter of a socialist, she used to be like him, but during the emergency, she lost her father and husband. Then she understood that no matter how much somebody tries to change the system, it will not change, then she adapted to the system later. However, Vani sides with the fisherman by stating that they will all be stakeholders in her farms and gets them to turn against Abhi.