Telangana's New Directors Are Changing Telugu Cinema: Where to Start
From Pelli Choopulu and Balagam to Dasara and The Paradise: how Telangana-rooted directors moved the region's dialect and lives to the centre of Telugu cinema.
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Short answer: Over the last decade a group of filmmakers with roots in Telangana has moved the region's dialect, villages and working-class lives from the edges of Telugu cinema to the centre. Three names define it: Tharun Bhascker (Pelli Choopulu, 2016), Venu Yeldandi (Balagam, 2023) and Srikanth Odela (Dasara, 2023, and this year's The Paradise). If you watch one film to understand the shift, make it Balagam. If you want the version with star power and scale, watch Dasara.
The subject is back in the conversation for three reasons this month. The Paradise, Odela's second film with Nani, began streaming on Netflix on 22 October in a cut about 24 minutes shorter than the theatrical one. On 19 October, Telangana Today ran an opinion piece by University of Hyderabad sociologist Chandri Raghava Reddy arguing that these directors are "rewriting Telugu cinema". And Venu Yeldandi's second film, Yellamma, has just locked a release date of 5 March 2027. Here is what the wave is, who is driving it and where to start.
From punchline to protagonist
For a long time, mainstream Telugu cinema had a default voice, and it was not Telangana's. When a character did speak in the Telangana dialect, he was usually the comic sidekick, the rowdy or the corrupt politician. Raghava Reddy's essay points to a well-known example: the corrupt minister in T. Krishna's 1985 Pratighatana, a film otherwise remembered for its progressive politics. Back in 2023, Telangana writer Peddinti Ashok Kumar made the same point to The Hindu: the dialect had long been sidelined and kept for antagonists and comic roles.
What changed is who is holding the camera. The directors in this group did not visit Telangana for local colour. They grew up there, and their films are built from places they know: a Hyderabad flat, a village funeral, a coal town on the Godavari. The dialect stopped being a costume and became the ordinary way the hero talks.
It was not a single movement with a manifesto. The films differ wildly in genre: a romantic comedy, a buddy film, a family drama about death rites, a blood-soaked revenge saga. What links them is specificity, and the discovery that audiences across the Telugu states, and beyond, would pay for it.
The directors and the films to know
Tharun Bhascker: the city comedies
Tharun Bhascker was raised in Hyderabad, and his father's family comes from Warangal. He started with short films before making Pelli Choopulu (2016), a romantic comedy about two strangers who get locked in a room during an arranged-marriage meeting. Vijay Deverakonda plays an aimless engineering graduate who wants to be a chef; Ritu Varma plays the woman with an actual plan. Made on a budget reported at between ₹60 lakh and ₹1.2 crore, it grossed over ₹30 crore in five weeks and won the National Film Awards for Best Telugu Film and Best Screenplay (Dialogues).
The film's real achievement was tone. It made a small, talky Hyderabad story feel like a mainstream event, and it handed its heroine the ambition the hero lacks. Malayalam viewers may already know the story without realising it: it was remade as Vijay Superum Pournamiyum (2019), as well as in Hindi (Mitron) and Tamil (Oh Manapenne!).
His follow-up, Ee Nagaraniki Emaindi (2018), is a buddy comedy about four Hyderabad friends who chase a short-film contest in Goa. It was a commercial success on release and has since become a cult favourite, enough to earn a re-release in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh five years later. Keedaa Cola (2023), a crime caper with Brahmanandam, got mixed reviews but keeps the same loose, local, conversational humour.
Venu Yeldandi: the village drama
Venu Yeldandi spent years as a comic actor, playing small parts in films and appearing on the TV comedy show Jabardasth. His directing debut, Balagam (released 3 March 2023), is the film most people point to when they talk about this wave.
The story is simple. An old man dies in a Telangana village, and over the days of his funeral rites his scattered, quarrelling family has to come back together. The plot hangs on a ritual: the family waits for a crow to accept the food offered to the dead man's soul, and it keeps refusing. Priyadarshi plays the grandson, a man in debt who sees the funeral partly as an opportunity.
Balagam did something unusual. It started streaming on Amazon Prime Video on 24 March 2023, three weeks after release, and audiences still kept going to theatres to see it. The Hindu reported villages across Telangana holding community screenings, and stories of estranged siblings reconciling after watching it. The film won the Telangana Gaddar Film Award for Best Feature Film, and Yeldandi won the Filmfare Award for Best Director (Telugu).
His next film raises the stakes. Yellamma stars Devi Sri Prasad, the composer better known as DSP, in his first lead role; he is also writing the music. Dil Raju presents it under Sri Venkateswara Creations, and it is due in theatres on 5 March 2027 in Telugu, Tamil, Hindi, Malayalam and Kannada. The plot has not been revealed. The question for Yellamma is whether Yeldandi's intimate, ritual-centred style survives a five-language release.
Srikanth Odela: the mass-hero version
Srikanth Odela comes from Godavarikhani in the old Karimnagar district. He learned the trade as an assistant director to Sukumar on Nannaku Prematho and Rangasthalam, and it shows: his films are built for the big screen.
Dasara (30 March 2023) is set in Veerlapalli, a village near Godavarikhani in the Singareni coal belt, where young men steal coal off trains and the local bar decides elections. Nani plays Dharani, Keerthy Suresh plays Vennela, and Malayalam actor Shine Tom Chacko made his Telugu debut in the film. It grossed over ₹121 crore worldwide and became the highest-grossing film of Nani's career at the time. It proved that the rooted approach could work at full commercial scale, with a star, a Santhosh Narayanan score and a violent revenge arc.
The Paradise (24 September 2026) reunited Odela and Nani for an even bigger swing: a period action drama set in a 1980s Secunderabad slum, about a marginalised community, the Savaari, fighting for recognition and citizenship. Anirudh Ravichander composed the music. Reviews were mixed to negative. Critics praised Nani and the production but faulted the screenplay, the pacing and the relentless violence, and the film fell short at the box office after a strong opening.
Two more films that belong in the conversation
Sekhar Kammula's Fidaa (2017) was shot in Banswada in Telangana and gave Sai Pallavi, already loved in Kerala for Premam, her Telugu debut as a spirited village girl. It was a blockbuster, and The Hindu later counted it, together with Dasara, among more than a dozen recent films that adopted the Telangana dialect. Mallesham (2019), a biopic of the ikat weaver and inventor Chintakindi Mallesham, brought the region's handloom villages to the screen.
What The Paradise tells us about the wave
It would be easy to read The Paradise's commercial stumble as the end of the story. We think that is the wrong lesson. Raghava Reddy's essay makes a fair point: the film matters "whatever one makes of its screenplay", because it trusts a hard, unglamorous story about identity to carry a big star. That is new for a film of this size.
But the wave's best films are not its biggest. Pelli Choopulu and Balagam worked because they were small, precise and funny about real people. Dasara worked because it kept that precision while adding scale. The Paradise leaned hardest into spectacle and violence, and that is where critics found it weakest. The streaming cut, about 24 minutes shorter, gives viewers a chance to judge whether a tighter version holds together better.
The next two years will test the idea from both ends: Odela has announced a film with Chiranjeevi, while Yeldandi takes a rooted, music-led story to five languages with Yellamma.
Why Malayalam viewers will recognise this
If you follow Malayalam cinema, this story will feel familiar. Kerala's own new generation wave of the 2010s also replaced formula with specific places, everyday speech and smaller stories, and it also found that audiences beyond the state wanted them. The difference is that Malayalam cinema already had a long art-house and middle-cinema tradition to draw on. Telangana's directors are carving out that space inside an industry built on star vehicles, which makes each success harder won.
The two industries are also more connected than they look. A Hyderabad romantic comedy became a Malayalam remake, a Malayalam actor turned up in Dasara, and an actress Kerala already loved led Fidaa. For the bigger picture of how southern films are changing Indian cinema, see how South Indian cinema is conquering Bollywood and our Tollywood vs Bollywood comparison.
Where to start
- Balagam (2023) for the purest example: a funeral, a family and a village, told with warmth and humour.
- Pelli Choopulu (2016) if you want something light. It is the film that showed a small Hyderabad story could become a hit.
- Dasara (2023) for the full mass-cinema version, with Nani and Keerthy Suresh.
- Ee Nagaraniki Emaindi (2018) for a hangout comedy about friends and half-forgotten dreams.
- The Paradise (2026) last, once you have seen Dasara, so you can judge how far Odela pushed the same ideas. It is on Netflix, including a Malayalam dub.
For more directors worth tracking across Indian cinema, see our list of Indian directors you should be following.
Quick answers
Who are the new Telangana directors in Telugu cinema?
The most prominent are Tharun Bhascker (Pelli Choopulu, Ee Nagaraniki Emaindi, Keedaa Cola), Venu Yeldandi (Balagam and the upcoming Yellamma) and Srikanth Odela (Dasara, The Paradise).
Where can I watch The Paradise?
It has been streaming on Netflix since 22 October 2026 in Telugu, with Tamil, Hindi, Kannada and Malayalam dubbed versions. The streaming version is about 24 minutes shorter than the theatrical cut.
When does Yellamma release?
The makers have announced a worldwide theatrical release on 5 March 2027 in five languages. Release dates can still move, so check closer to the date.
Sources: Telangana Today: The new Tollywood-Telangana directors are rewriting Telugu cinema (19 Oct 2026), The Hindu: Embracing the Telangana dialect (24 Apr 2023), Moneycontrol: Yellamma release date announced (Oct 2026), The Times of India: The Paradise OTT release (Oct 2026), Pelli Choopulu, Tharun Bhascker, Balagam, Venu Yeldandi, Dasara, Srikanth Odela, The Paradise (2026 film), Fidaa (Wikipedia pages accessed 25 Oct 2026).
