SEARCHING FOR NIRVANA

From the director of Netflix's documentary feature The Last Shaman

A new short documentary series by Raz Degan

Series Trailer

Format

4 Part Documentary-series

40min / Episode

Genre

Docu-Drama

Production Status

Principal Photography:

90% Complete
Edit: Assembly cut in progress

Budget

1.2 M

SERIES OVERVIEW

Italy's first heroin-overdose ignited a national firestorm — and Giancarlo was the one holding the syringe.

Tatti dies in his arms and Italy erupts: headlines roar, police flood the streets, politicians weaponize the tragedy, and overnight he becomes the face of a generation gone wrong.

Rejected by all, even by his own mother, Giancarlo is crushed by guilt and haunted by shame. He escapes to India, hurls his passport into the Ganges, and is reborn as Shiva Das — a wandering ascetic monk chasing a redemption he can’t define.

Charismatic yet flawed, he moves through extremes: rebellion to renunciation, devotion to obsession, sanctity to self-destruction. But no ritual can erase the karmic debt that shadows him. His past stains every choice he makes, repeating across decades until his final turn: in his last hours, the daughter he abandoned and begins searching for, in a twist of fate, will be the only one to hold the key to his ultimate liberation.

Searching for Nirvana is the true story of a man’s spiritual odyssey, told through the lens of karmic reckoning. Beyond the portrait of one man seeking redemption, it becomes a universal meditation on how every choice we make echoes across continents, through time, lineage, and the generations that follow.

EPISODE SYNOPSIS

EP 1 – KARMA | Escape

Italy, late 1960s: protests, heroin, and a generation burning the rulebook. When Giancarlo gives his girlfriend a fatal overdose, his entire world collapses — the media hunts him, the police close in, and even his own mother shuts the door. With no future left in Italy, he jumps on the Magic Bus heading east, clinging to the hope that distance equals salvation. But the road only pushes him deeper into the guilt he’s trying to outrun. When he finally reaches India — he’s a fugitive stepping into something far harsher than the disaster he left behind.

EP 2 – DHARMA | Transformation

Varanasi hits him like a fist: death, smoke, rituals, and a guru who reads him like an open wound. Giancarlo enters the ashram thinking he can reinvent himself, but extremism tears him apart before it rebuilds anything. Ritual by ritual, he sheds his old life until the only move left is to burn it entirely. He throws his passport in the Ganges, takes the name Shiva Das — a clean break with the man he was. What he doesn’t yet understand is that the path he chose demands more than devotion; it demands everything.

EP 3 – PRALAYA | Spiral

Shiva’s life as a sadhu turns from devotion to obsession as the rituals grow darker and the line between sanity and surrender wears thin. When the spiritual fire becomes too much, he snaps and disappears into 1980s Bangkok — a city built for self-destruction he knows far well. There he dives into drugs, smuggling, and chaos, briefly anchored by a woman who becomes pregnant with his child. Afraid of repeating the past, he repeats it anyway — abandoning her and spiraling until he’s arrested and deported. Stripped of everything, he limps back to Italy, trying to rebuild a life out of the ruins of all the lives he’s broken.

EP 4 – NIRVANA | Reckoning

Decades later, Shiva Das is an old man in Italy: sick, undocumented, and fading fast. His last wish is simple, to have his ashes scattered in the Ganges, yet bureaucracy blocks him at every turn. As his body fades and time grows thin, he begins searching for the daughter he never met. In a last twist of fate, Snowie — the very daughter abandoned before birth — is the one person who can unlock his final wish. Whether their paths cross or miss each other entirely will shape their ultimate destiny, and her choice will determine whether their karmic bond is finally released or carried into the next life.

12 YEARS IN THE MAKING

Some seek Nirvana in caves.

Others find it in the eyes of those they left behind.

Filmed over twelve years across three continents, Searching for Nirvana unveils never-before-seen real-life footage captured throughout Shiva’s journey, woven with archival materials, photographs, diaries, interviews, and reenactments shot on location. The reenactments fill in the years no camera witnessed, creating a seamless narrative that moves between reality and remembered truth.

MAIN CHARACTERS

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SHIVA DAS

Born Giancarlo Cassuti, a freethinker and musician, a rebellious anarchist, drug addict, and alcoholic. He crossed the realms of society a trafficker, a deserter, and prisoner, transforming into a monk, an ascetic renouncer, and a devotee of the Dharma. A passionate lover and relentless thrill-seeker, Shiva is torn between his longing for liberation and the weight of karma that refuses to let go.

DIRECTOR'S NOTES

Searching for Nirvana is a story about karma in its human form — the past we inherit, the damage we create, and how those choices ripple through generations. For twelve years I followed Giancarlo across continents as he tried to outrun guilt, identity, and the weight he never meant to pass on.

What I found wasn’t a holy man or a criminal, but someone caught in a cycle older than himself — the same pattern that shaped the daughter he never met, and the life she grew up inside. Like The Last Shaman, where the jungle framed a father–son reckoning, this film uses the Ganges, the Himalayas, and Bangkok to reveal a quieter truth: the scars between parent and child don’t disappear just because we cross a border or change a name.

In the end, the film leaves one question open:
Can we step out of the karma we’re born into, or do we finally have to face it — together?

— Raz Degan