Epic review: Aditya Hasan's film turns ordinary moments into memories of young love

Telugu cinema has given us countless deep and heartbreaking love stories across decades and generations. Some stay with us for the way they begin, others for the way they end, but the rare ones become memorable for everything in between: stolen glances, pointless arguments, unexpected laughter, long conversations, awkward silences, and seemingly insignificant moments that quietly become memories.

Aditya Hasan’s Epic – The First Semester, a direct continuation of the popular 2024 web series 90's A Middle Class Biopic, is built almost entirely out of these fragments. It is less a conventional love story with a neat beginning and end, and more a scrapbook of a relationship unfolding in all its messy, tender and bewildering beauty. It feels like a garland made of moments, threaded together into a relationship that feels lived rather than constructed. Some flowers are fresh, some have begun to wilt, and a few perhaps do not quite belong. Yet together, they capture something wonderfully imperfect about young love.

Hasan is more interested in what a relationship feels like than what it is supposed to look like. His film follows Aditya (Anand Deverakonda), a soft-natured, middle-class young man from Wanaparthy who travels to London for higher studies. A budding filmmaker carrying the weight of his family’s expectations, he meets Kadali (Vaishnavi Chaitanya), and what begins as an unusual connection soon turns messier.

The airport send-off is one of the film’s quietest triumphs: a small-town boy leaving home for the first time, parents hovering with instructions they know he will forget, and a family trying to remain composed while falling apart a little. It establishes the emotional register for what follows.

Hasan’s biggest strength is his personal voice. Details surrounding Aditya’s filmmaking ambitions, from the clapboard in his room marked “Epic” to the script he is working on, suggest that the filmmaker has placed pieces of himself into the story. Some cultural details, such as Tupperware boxes and pickles from home, feel familiar, but smaller touches, like eating dinner in front of an old Venkatesh film, make the world feel specific rather than generic.

The film is particularly effective when it observes intimacy without overplaying it. In one scene, Kadali tells Aditya that she has back pain and simply wants him near her. What follows becomes a sensitive portrait of a young man learning to understand his partner’s pain. Elsewhere, an early SP Balasubrahmanyam song leads Kadali to suggest that, since Aditya is a director, they should compose their own background score. It gives Hesham Abdul Wahab’s music a natural place within the story, while the retro songs add to the film’s nostalgic texture without taking away from the narrative.

The strongest moments are often the simplest. Sivaji, as Aditya’s father, quietly wanders into his son’s empty room after he leaves for the UK, missing him without a word. The gesture finds a beautiful echo in the climax, when the father quietly accepts his son’s unconventional choices. Between those moments is the film’s emotional high point: a tense conversation about money, sacrifice and the future, with Sivaji delivering a performance that genuinely lands.

Vaishnavi Chaitanya is the film’s greatest asset. She gives Kadali an emotional unpredictability that keeps the relationship alive even when the narrative wanders. Affectionate, impulsive, difficult and vulnerable, Kadali feels contradictory without ever becoming defined by a single trait.

Anand Deverakonda attempts something considerably gentler than his intensity-driven Baby persona. His quieter moments work, particularly when Aditya is observing those around him. But his portrayal of shyness occasionally feels overplayed. After an important night between the couple, Kadali asks why he is behaving awkwardly, and he admits that he is simply shy. The scene captures the childlike discomfort of newfound intimacy, but Deverakonda pushes the reaction so far that it feels performed rather than natural. A more restrained approach could have made Aditya’s awkwardness more endearing.

Kalyan Shankar, as the friend, supplies much of the comic relief, including one sequence that begins as comedy around a piece of big news before taking an unexpectedly emotional turn.

Not everything holds together. At close to two and a half hours, the film feels stretched in its middle act, particularly during the extended conversations between Aditya and Kadali once their relationship is established. The issue is not the amount of conversation, since that is central to the film’s charm, but that several exchanges revisit the same uncertainties without enough emotional or dramatic movement. A firmer edit could have preserved the leisurely intimacy while giving the turning points greater weight.

The film’s one genuine misstep is an outburst in which Kadali damages furniture in her room. The sequence is so tonally heightened that it briefly resembles a Hollywood-style obsession drama and feels borrowed from another film, even though the story later contextualises her behaviour.

Epic – The First Semester never quite becomes the sweeping romance its title promises. Instead, it settles into something smaller and, at its best, more affecting: a collection of memories, arguments, songs and silences that captures young love as a series of moments that slowly become a life together. Some flowers in this garland have wilted. But enough remain beautiful to make you want to keep wearing it.- EndsPublished By: T Naga Maruthi AcharyaPublished On: Sep 11, 2026 09:24 ISTALSO READ | Ranabaali teaser: Vijay Deverakonda leads a story born from a devastating famine