Director and writer · Telugu cinema
Shiva Nirvana
Shiva Nirvana movies: 5 Telugu films on file (5 as director, 4 as writer), 2017–2026. Earliest on file: Ninnu Kori (2017). Latest release: Irumudi (21 August 2026).
- Films on file
- 5 (5 as director, 4 as writer)
- Years on file
- 2017–2026
- Selected films on file
- Majili, Kushi, Tuck Jagadish
- Record
- Q27734162 on Wikidata
Shiva Nirvana (born Siva Sankar Lalam) is an Indian film director and screenwriter in Telugu cinema. His films include the romantic sports drama Majili (2019), starring Naga Chaitanya and Samantha, and the romantic comedy Kushi (2023), starring Vijay Deverakonda and Samantha.
Early life
Shiva Nirvana comes from Sabbavaram in Visakhapatnam district, Andhra Pradesh. He adopted “Nirvana” as his surname because he felt deeply connected to the word the first time he came across it. He earned an M.Sc. and a B.Ed. and taught biology for two years.
Assistant director
He moved to Hyderabad and worked as an assistant director to Ram Gopal Varma on Rakta Charitra (2010) and to Parasuram on Solo (2011).
Majili
Majili, produced by Sahu Garapati and Harish Peddi under Shine Screens, follows a cricket coach who drinks heavily as he struggles with past trauma, and his wife, who sacrifices her own happiness to help him recover. It was Chaitanya and Samantha’s fourth film together.
Reception of Majili
Released on 5 April 2019, Majili was well received by critics and audiences, and it was remade in Marathi as Ved in 2022. Shiva Nirvana also wrote the lyrics for its song “Yedetthu Mallele”.
Kushi
A film pairing Shiva Nirvana with Vijay Deverakonda was first announced in December 2019. It was launched in April 2022 under Mythri Movie Makers as Kushi, a love story between a young man from an atheist family and a woman from a devout one, shot partly in Kashmir. Released on 1 September 2023, it drew mixed reviews. Its commercial result is described inconsistently, ranging from an average grosser to a loss.
Career on file
Shiva Nirvana has 5 Telugu films on file at Tollywood Desk, dated from 2017 to 2026: five films as director and four films as writer. The earliest of them is Ninnu Kori (2017), and the most recent release is Irumudi (2026). The most widely covered of these, counted by Wikipedia language editions, are Majili (2019), Kushi (2023) and Tuck Jagadish (2021).
In the films Shiva Nirvana directed, Samantha Ruth Prabhu and Nani appear most often (two films each). Music on three of them is by Gopi Sundar. Across these films the credits on file name 5 music directors and 22 other credited actors.
Runtime is on file for 5 of them; they average 149 minutes, and the longest is Kushi at 165 minutes. Four of them have a streaming (OTT) release noted on the site. By decade the list splits into 2010s (2) and 2020s (3).
Figures come from the films on file at Tollywood Desk and change as records are added.