Baashha

Baashha (transl. Emperor) is a 1995 Indian Tamil-language gangster action film written and directed by Suresh Krissna. The film stars Rajinikanth, Nagma and Raghuvaran, with Janagaraj, Devan, Shashi Kumar, Vijayakumar, Anandaraj, Charan Raj, Kitty, Sathyapriya, Shenbaga and Yuvarani in supporting roles. It revolves around an auto rickshaw driver who maintains a humble exterior and avoids violence but conceals a dark past from his family. During the making of Annaamalai (1992), Rajinikanth and Krissna discussed a scene from the former's Hindi film Hum (1991), which was not filmed. The story of Baashha and the film's core plot were adapted from that scene. Principal photography began in August 1994 and was completed in less than five months. P. S. Prakash was the cinematographer, and it was edited by Ganesh Kumar. The dialogues were scripted by Balakumaran. The music was composed by Deva and the lyrics were penned by Vairamuthu. Baashha was released on 12 January 1995 with positive feedback and became one of the most successful films in Rajinikanth's career, running for nearly 15 months in theatres. Rajinikanth won the Filmfans Association Award and the Cinema Express Award for Best Actor for his performance. The film was remade in Kannada as Kotigobba (2001) and in Bengali as Guru (2003). A digitally restored version of the film was released in 2017, and a remastered version was in 2025.