TNI Bureau: S. S. Rajamouli’s RRR was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Original Song category, and it finally ended up winning the prize for its Naatu Naatu song.
Both composer MM Keeravani and lyricist Chandrabose received the award on behalf of the team.
However, a section of Indian fans and especially fans of the SS Rajamouli were upset when host Jimmy Kimmel called RRR a ‘Bollywood movie’ in his opening monologue.
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Netizens were quick to point out that that was not the case, as RRR is a Telugu-language Indian film. Many of them took to the internet to make their displeasure known. One user commented, “RRR is South Indian cinema, a Telugu film, Tollywood. Not Bollywood, as some Oscars ppl might be saying!” As another person tweeted out, “India has different film industries for different languages…Bollywood means Hindi language film industry…since Hindi is the most spoken language in India Bollywood is more popular..RRR is a Telugu language film from south part of India (sic).”
Another cinephile wrote down “Ooh… #Oscars just love controversies and conflicts. Referring to #RRR as a Bollywood film even after hearing that the creators are promoting it as an Indian film for months.” It is factually correct that the RRR team, including director Rajamouli, has many a times referred to RRR as a Telugu language film, so that there remained no confusion about which Indian industry did the film actually came from.
Apart from, ‘Naatu Naatu,’ other Indian contender the Kartiki Gonsalves-directed documentary short The Elephant Whisperers walked away with the golden statuette in the category.
Shaunak Sen’s documentary feature All That Breathes was the other contender from India but it had to bow out of the Oscars race.
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