Nithish Sahadev

The production of Mela recently moved to Kottayam, where Nithish Sahadev is filming a well-of-death sequence at a circus. He is directing the film, a Mammootty Kampany production with Mammootty in the lead, from a script he co-wrote with Anuraj O.B. Born on 1 March 1991 in Thiruvananthapuram, the director and screenwriter, whose work is mostly in Malayalam, studied electronics and communication engineering at Mohandas College of Engineering and Technology, Nedumangad, and then trained at Chennai Film Industrial School. He started as an assistant director, first on Vipin Das's debut Mudhugauv (2016) and then on Jude Anthany Joseph's Oru Muthassi Gadha (2016). He directed the short film Magneto (2019), was creative director on Antakshari (2020) and produced the short web series Kalyana Kacheri (2021). His first feature, Falimy (2023), is a comedy-drama with Basil Joseph, Jagadish and Manju Pillai about a squabbling middle-class family that travels to Varanasi and learns something about itself on the way. The political film Thalaivar Thambi Thalaimaiyil, released in January 2026, was his Tamil debut, with Jiiva playing a panchayat president.