The Paradise

Secunderabad in the 1980s, forty years after Indian independence. The Savaari are a marginalised tribe scraping by in a slum known as Paradise, with no identity papers and no legal recognition. They live under the thumb of Shikanja Malik, a feudal landlord who forces them to brew illicit liquor and has the politicians and the police on his side. Sammakka is the first to stand up to him, and she has spent years fighting for her people to exist on paper.

Her son Jadal wants no part of it. As a boy he was beaten up, and Malik had an insult tattooed on his arm, and he's blamed his mother ever since. After fourteen years in prison he returns to Paradise with one thing on his mind: settling scores with Malik and his son Vikram, who now has his eye on a political career. What he finds is a community about to be wiped out.

'The Paradise' reunites Nani with Srikanth Odela, who directed him in 'Dasara' (2023). Long known as the "Natural Star" of Telugu romcoms and family dramas, Nani has been moving towards rougher material with films like 'HIT: The Third Case', and this is his biggest film yet in scale and action.

Mohan Babu plays Malik and Sonali Kulkarni plays Sammakka, while Raghav Juyal, the star of 'Kill' (2024), makes his Telugu debut as Vikram. Kayadu Lohar, Sampoornesh Babu and Easwari Rao round out the cast, with cameos from Sathyaraj and Keerthy Suresh, who teams up with Nani and Odela again for a song. Anirudh Ravichander wrote the music. Filming began in Hyderabad in June 2025 and ran past a hundred days, split between Ramoji Film City and purpose-built sets, among them a vast slum that took some five months to build.

It opened on 24 September 2026 with an A certificate (adults only) in India for its violence. Critics were hard on it, with an average of 3.1 out of 10 across the 13 outlets collected on Movienco, but it still became the highest grossing film of Nani's career. In the US and Canada it took just over two million dollars. It has been on Netflix in the UK since 22 October, in a shorter cut than the one shown in cinemas.

• Action
• Adventure
• Drama