Sunny Leone in a still from Anurag Kashyap's Kennedy (IMAGE: X)
It took almost three years for Anurag Kashyap’s Kennedy to finally reach a wide audience in India. After its first screening at the MAMI Film Festival in 2023, the noir thriller hit Zee5 on February 20, 2026.
But when fans tuned in, a lot of them noticed something was off; the streaming version had several cuts and missing scenes, thanks to the Central Board of Film Certification.
Kennedy stars Rahul Bhat as the lead, with Sunny Leone alongside him. The story follows a cop everyone thinks is dead, who now works as a hitman for a crooked senior officer. He’s hunting down a gangster outside India, all while dealing with Mumbai’s deep-rooted corruption and power struggles for his boss.
News 18 reported that the CBFC gave Kennedy an A certificate, but only after making some pretty noticeable edits—like muting out the curse word ‘motherf*****’, slapping anti-smoking warnings on every smoking scene, and chopping out a 14-second segment completely.
Any mention of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim and US President Donald Trump got scrubbed out. There’s a character named Salim in the movie who was supposed to be Dawood’s associate, but now all those references just call him “Pakistan Don.”
And a line about Donald Trump? That’s now “Pump Trump.” It’s almost funny, if it weren’t so obvious.
Kennedy’s road to an Indian release was long. The film got a standing ovation at Cannes in 2023, then made its Indian debut at MAMI in Mumbai later that year.
After that, it travelled the festival circuit, Sydney, Bucheon, Neuchâtel, Melbourne, London, and more. Despite all the buzz, no one brought it to Indian theatres.
In 2025, Kennedy became the only Indian film picked for Letterboxd’s first-ever Video Store. “I am happy that finally the film will be available for the general audience to watch in some parts of the world,” Anurag said back then.
Finally, in January, Zee5 announced Kennedy was coming to streaming in India. They dropped the trailer earlier this month, and the film landed on February 20. Zee Studios presented it and Good Bad Films produced it, with Rahul Bhat and Sunny Leone leading the cast, joined by Mohit Takalkar, Abhilash Thapliyal, and Megha Burma.
With 13 years on the line, Ashish Kumar Singh loves everything when it comes to movies, music, travel and pop culture. Formerly employed at ANI, Pinkvilla, India Today and HT, Ashish has interviewed some of the top celebrities of India, including Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan, Ranveer Singh, Ranbir Kapoor and Hrithik Roshan, among others. Breaking news excites him and deadlines are what he chases. Interviewing comes naturally to him. Hit him up at ashish.kumar02singh@gmail.com.
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