Shri Krishnadevaraya (2001)

Panthulu’s last big Kannada historical returns to his familiar terrain of the 16th C. Vijayanagara Empire with its best-known king, Krishnadeva Raya (Rajkumar), his canny minister Thimmarasu (Panthulu) and the wise buffoon Tenali Ramakrishna, all famous figures in the Kannada historical genre. While apparently addressing a regional-chauvinist ‘Kannada Nadu’, the film was in fact shot in Rajasthan, and adopted Rajasthani architecture to locate Karnataka’s ‘cultural pinnacle’.