With two weeks to go before its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, Anurag Kashyap has posted two new stills of Rahul Bhat and Sunny Leone in character from Kennedy. The film will be shown out of competition at the 76th edition in the Midnights Screening Section. Anurag shared the new photographs on Instagram as he began the countdown for the film.
Tagging the cast and crew of the film, he wrote on Instagram, “2 weeks to go! #Kennedy’s countdown to Cannes is on!” The first still features Rahul as Kennedy. He is sitting on a red leather sofa, peeling an apple while smoking. The next still is of Sunny Leone as the character Charlie. She is wearing a black saree while seated on a chaise lounge. Holding a drink in her hand, she seems to be looking off camera at someone else.
Fans of the director began asking for the trailer in the comments section. One fan shared, “Trailer maangta hai apun ko kuch toh footage do (We want the trailer, please share some glimpses from the film).” While others also wondered about the film’s release in India later. They asked, “#cannes ke baad kisi ott me? (After Cannes, which streaming platform will it come on?)” Actor Abhilash Thapliyal added, “Yes we Cannes..!” Kennedy also stars Mohit Takalkar, Abhilash and Megha Burman.
In a statement, Anurag shared, “I’ve lived with the character for a very long time since I was writing for Sudhir Mishra and he used to tell me stories of this mad policeman. Then years later during the lockdown, a headline incident happened in Mumbai and that triggered an idea and I took the cop from Sudhir Mishra’s stories and put him around that incident and Kennedy was born. It’s one of those ones that suddenly comes to you and you write relentlessly till it’s fully formed. Then I was lucky to find people who believed in it as much as I did, and it just happened.”