New Delhi: Director Rahul Ravindran’s The Girlfriend is steadily emerging as the first big Telugu breakout of the year, with audiences calling it the “best Telugu film of the year”. Starring actor Rashmika Mandanna, the film has become a conversation piece – one that interrogates the “nice guy” trope, foregrounds women choosing themselves, and centres female friendships in a space usually dominated by male desire.

Clips from the film have been circulating across Instagram and X, accompanied by captions like “women written by a man” and, more specifically, “women written by Rahul Ravindran” – a reference to the director’s earlier work in Chi La Sow (2018), which also featured layered female characters.

The ‘nice guy’

The film follows Bhooma Devi, a postgraduate studen

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