RRR: SS Rajamouli receives the Best Director award bestowed by New York Film Critics Circle

SS Rajamouli is back in the news for RRR again. The Jr NTR, Ram Charan starrer helped him bag the coveted honour as the ‘Best Director’ in 2022, bestowed by the honorary forum of critics, New York Film Critics Circle. While the win for the Baahubali filmmaker was announced earlier in December 2022, he was in New York on December 5 to grace the awards ceremony in the presence of who’s who in the global film fraternity and his family members - wife Rama Rajamouli, son Karthikeya and his daughter-in-law.

The filmmaker stated that RRR was purely made to ensure an emotional high to Indian viewers but it surprised him to see how the West embraced the film similarly. “I still have the same excitement as a kid when I watch a movie in a hall and the lights being switched off in an auditorium. Whenever I make a film, I imagine myself sitting in that hall, make that sequence for the big screen,” he said while wearing a blue-coloured kurta paired with a dhoti for the event.

“The best example of the theatrical experience was when I watched Terminator 2 as a young adult. The theatre-owner stopped the film midway after a huge action piece and I could see the element of awe in every viewer’s face that almost said, ‘What the hell did we watch?’ That’s the excitement I want to give to my audiences. I want my heroes to be larger-than-life, almost super-human but that quality should come from a strong human emotion,” SS Rajamouli mentioned.

“I don’t know if you guys know how we watch a film on the first day, back in India. You can’t see the visuals, listen to the dialogues and it is an incredible celebration. I saw the same kind of reception in the west for RRR, be it LA, New York or Chicago. They were reacting the same way as Indians. It was one of the biggest achievements of RRR, bringing back the joy of watching a film in theatres,” he added, while also mentioning how his entire family is dedicated to cinema and thanking team RRR.

Baahubali producer Shobu Yarlagadda was also present at the event. RRR, cinematographed by K Senthil Kumar and edited by Sreekar Prasad, also starred Alia Bhatt, Ajay Devgn, Samuthirakani, Olivia Morris, to name a few. Founded in 1935, New York Film Critics Circle comprises a group of critics from dailies, weeklies, magazines, and online publications in the US. The awards given by the forum are often viewed as harbingers of the Oscar nominations.