KOHRRA (FOG)

This is a fascinating series on Netflix worth watching. Kohrra won India’s Filmfare Award in 2023 for Best Director, Best Actor in a Drama Series and Best Supporting Actor. It is not a stereotypical Indian drama constructed around elaborately choreographed dances and designer saris. It shows a darker side of Indian society consisting of police abuse, drug addiction, violence, and patriarchy.

As the title implies, it is the foggy aspects the investigators dig up that help them solve the case. A victim’s family normally reacts to the murder of a loved one with shock and grief. In this case, the dynamics of the murder investigation affect the community at large by uncovering facts about the victim that were previously hidden.

A British citizen of Indian descent, an NRI – Non Resident Indian, is found in a field brutally murdered. He was in Punjab to get married, and now his best friend has also gone missing. The police inform the victim’s fiancee and her family halfway through their pre-wedding celebrations. As usual, the higher-ups are keen to solve the case quickly due to pressure from the victim’s family and local politicians. The inspector and his team follow the initial clues but are quickly told get a confession and close the case. A local drug addict is an easy target for the crime, yet the inspector isn’t buying it due to a lack of evidence. Politics and crime are intertwined in this storyline in a similar fashion to my previous post on Denmark’s The Killing.

I had a hunch about part of the mystery of this murder, but not all of it. I appreciated that the writers created something unusual instead of following a conventional mystery format. There were some curveballs in the story that I had not expected. Similar to my thoughts about truth while watching The Killing, Kohrra had me rethinking my perception of the world. We each have our own reality, largely unseen to the people around us. Peering through the fog into each other’s reality could make the difference in understanding each other better. Or should we continue assuming we know everything about everyone because we project our reality on to others?

Drug addition in Punjab is a topic that was previously told in a film called Udta Punjab. Another excellent series for anyone interested in Indian crime drama is Dahaad. I was extremely impressed with the actor who played the killer, Vijay Sharma. I barely recognized him the next time I saw him in a movie. Dahaad is on Amazon Prime.