‘No more Tollywood, Bollywood’: Kamal Haasan and Chiranjeevi call for ‘only Indian cinema’ at Telangana Gaddar Awards

“Because you are the hero of this unification, I request you: no more Tollywood, Kollywood, Bollywood, Mollywood, Sandalwood. It should be one. Cinema. Indian cinema.”

‘People from across the globe should come here to shoot’

Chiranjeevi received the prestigious NTR National Award from Chief Minister Revanth Reddy at the ceremony. When he spoke, he picked up almost exactly where Kamal had left off, and took it further. “Hyderabad should become a hub for all kinds of cinema, to be unified and called Indian cinema. People from across the globe should come here to shoot their films,” he said.

He did not leave it as an aspiration. He backed it with examples. The way K-pop and K-dramas changed South Korea’s economy. The way anime became a genuine GDP contributor for Japan. He wants Indian cinema to occupy that kind of space globally, and he wants Hyderabad to be at the centre of it.

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“I want our country to consider cinema as a medium and see it as a tool to improve our economy and bring us name and fame,” he said. He also had something to say to the neighbouring state. Expressing hope that Andhra Pradesh would take note of what Telangana has done with these awards, he said: “When it comes to appreciating arts, I expect AP to take inspiration from Telangana and come up with state awards to recognise and appreciate art.”

The ceremony also honoured Jayasudha, Singeetham Srinivasa Rao, and Ashwini Dutt with special recognitions, while Naga Chaitanya won Best Actor for Thandel and Rashmika Mandanna took home Best Actress for The Girlfriend.

But it was the two elder statesmen of Indian cinema who gave the night its loudest talking point. Both started in the same era, both are still drawing crowds, and on this particular evening, both were saying the same thing from different angles: the walls between regional film industries have held long enough, and Hyderabad is as good a place as any to start tearing them down.