Ninnila Ninnila

Ninnila Ninnila is a 2021 Telugu romantic drama about love, grief and cooking, written and directed by Ani I. V. Sasi in his debut. Tamil actor Ashok Selvan makes his Telugu debut opposite Ritu Varma and Nithya Menen. It skipped cinemas and was released on 26 February 2021 as a pay-per-view title on Zee Plex, alongside a Tamil dubbed version called Theeni.

What the story is about

Dev arrives in London to work at Amara, a restaurant run by a revered head chef who has not cooked in 15 years and judges every dish by smell alone. Dev is a gifted cook, but he has sudden muscle spasms and sometimes talks as if someone else is in the room. After a night trapped with his colleague Tara in the restaurant’s faulty cold store, he tells her why: since childhood he has had a friend named Maya, who loved the food he made, and although she died in an accident five years ago, he still sees her. As Tara begins to understand him, and he teaches her to cook, their own pasts start to surface.

Cast and crew

• Ashok Selvan as Dev
• Ritu Varma as Tara
• Nithya Menen as Maya
• Nassar as the head chef
• Satya as Rajesh, Dev’s friend and colleague
• Brahmaji as Doctor Bharath

Writer and director: Ani I. V. Sasi. Producer: B. V. S. N. Prasad (Sri Venkateswara Cine Chitra). Music: Rajesh Murugesan, lyrics by Sri Mani. Runtime: 118 minutes.

Making the film

Ani I. V. Sasi is the son of the Malayalam director I. V. Sasi. He first wanted to make the film in Malayalam, but the Telugu producer B. V. S. N. Prasad liked the script and agreed to back it. It was shot in Hyderabad and London. Nithya Menen also recorded a song for the film at Raghu Dixit’s studio in Bengaluru, The News Minute reported, though the song did not make the final cut.

Reviews

Critics were warm. Hemanth Kumar of Firstpost said it “hits the right chord” with a simple story about relationships, grief and love told through food. Sangeetha Devi of The Hindu called it “a romance drama where love, loss, longing and healing are forged through food” and said all three leads kept her engaged. Avinash Ramachandran of The New Indian Express felt it did “an excellent job of elevating the simple to special”. The Times of India gave it three out of five, noting that it relies less on plot than on a love of food.

Where to watch Ninnila Ninnila

The film premiered as a pay-per-view release on Zee Plex in February 2021. We do not have a confirmed current streaming listing on file; if we verify one with a platform, it will appear on this page.

Sources: the Wikipedia article on Ninnila Ninnila and the reviews and reports it cites, linked above; our own cast and crew records.