S. S. Rajamouli, the visitor on this episode of The truestarz’s Awards Chatter podcast, is a filmmaker from India whose constant observe file of huge important and industrial success in Telugu-language cinema may lead one to name him the James Cameron of Tollywood.

Described by The New Yorker as “an artist of distinctive temperament and expertise,” by the New York Instances as a filmmaker with “a knack for maximalist motion and imaginative set items, lots of that are constructed round dynamic particular results and choreography” and by the Los Angeles Instances as “a grasp of spectacle” and “considered one of his nation’s preeminent powerhouse filmmakers,” he’s the winner of three Nationwide Movie Awards, India’s equal of the Oscars, and is the highest-paid director in India — not least as a result of three of his movies are among the many 5 highest-grossing within the historical past of Indian cinema, every of which, when made, was additionally the most costly Indian movie ever: 2015’s Baahubali: The Starting, 2017’s Baahubali 2: The Conclusion and 2022’s RRR.

RRR, Rajamouli’s twelfth characteristic, is a period-piece musical that’s additionally an motion film, a romance and a thriller. And the movie is his greatest worldwide success but. On a funds of $72 million, it raked in $175 million on the world field workplace, making it the third highest grossing movie of all time in India and the fourth highest grossing Indian movie world wide — and it has reached untold numbers of further folks through Netflix, ensuing within the likes of the brothers Anthony Russo and Joseph Russo, James Gunn, Sam Raimi and Jason Blum turning into vocal followers of the movie and its showstopping “Naatu Naatu” music and dance quantity.

U.S.-based awards teams have additionally embraced it to a better extent than every other Indian movie. The Nationwide Board of Evaluation selected it as considered one of 2022’s prime 10 movies. The Los Angeles Movie Critics Affiliation awarded it finest music/rating, whereas the New York Movie Critics Circle chosen Rajamouli because the 12 months’s finest director. The movie was nominated for the most effective international language movie and finest authentic music Golden Globe awards, successful the latter, and the Critics Selection Affiliation nominated it for finest image, finest director, finest international language movie and finest authentic music Critics Selection Awards, the latter two of which it received.

RRR is now poised to make a dent within the Oscar nominations, too — not in the most effective worldwide characteristic class, for which India shockingly handed it over, however fairly presumably within the classes of finest authentic music, for which “Naatu Naatu” is amongst 15 finalists, and maybe finest director and finest image too.

Over the course of a dialog on the Ross Home in Mount Olympus, whereas a screening of RRR was happening in an adjoining screening room, 49-year-old Rajamouli displays on a variety of matters.

He talks about what it was like for him rising up in a household of filmmakers who skilled sizable ups and downs and the way he broke into the enterprise and made a reputation for himself, not least by making movies that have been in a position to transcend India’s completely different areas, languages and cultures.

And he speaks about why, after making the highest-grossing movie in India of all time, Baahubali 2: The Conclusion, when he may have carried out absolutely anything, he subsequent wished to make a movie that may pair two of India’s greatest stars within the roles of two of India’s greatest heroes in RRR.

And he reveals what he has made from the movie’s finest worldwide characteristic Oscar snub at residence and large reception world wide.