Baahubali 2 brings attention to South Indian cinema

CAIRO - 26 May 2017: On April 28 an Indian movie made history the day it was released titled “Baahubali 2: The Conclusion,” was shown in 9,000 cinema theatres across the world, exceeding any Hindi or non-Hindi language movie in the country.

In less than two weeks, it broke the Indian box-office records, beating Aamir Khan's 2014 movie PK, to be the highest grossing movie in the history of the Indian cinema.

This action historic fiction movie is a “Lord of the Rings”-style fantasy that relies much on computer graphics. The movie seems to have all ingredients of success, the movie stars are among the most famous in the southern Indian movie industry, the graphics are visually stunning, the action is exciting, and the plot is compelling. It was filmed in Telugu and Tamil languages.

“Baahubali 2: The Conclusion” was instantly acclaimed by critics and audience. Its rating on Rotten Tomatoes is 100 percent, and on IMBD (Internet Movie Data Base) is 8.9, which made it the 11th top rated Indian movie in the website!

Bollywood, Tollywood and Kollywood

Many people mistakenly use Bollywood as a synonym to Indian movie. In fact, Bollywood refers to only one category of the Indian movies; those made in Hindi-language. But as India has a number languages and cultures within its borders, it also a number of cinema industries that represent the diversity.

Tollywood refers the segment of Indian cinema productions in the Telugu language. It is the second largest in the industry after Bollywood. It is based in Hyderabad, Telangana.

And Kollywood refers to the movies produced in the Tamil language of the Southern state of Tamil Nadu. This industry is based in the neighborhood of Chennai (Where Bollywood Superstar partially shot his movie Chenai Express). Filmed in both Telugu and Tamil languages, Baahubali 2 belongs to both of them.

According to local Indian estimations, around 1,500-2,000 movies are produced annually all over the country. Hindi-language Bollywood movies are less than 20 percent of the total number of movies, yet yield 43 percent of national box-office earnings, which are worth about $2 billion. The rest is yielded by movies of 20 other languages.

That is why for a movie filmed in two southern languages makes such a record made by Baahubali 2: The Conclusion.

It is important to note that Southern India is a healthy environment for film-makers. Its 260 million population is richer than the national average, and they opt to watch movies in their provincial languages to Hindi. Also, it is safe to say that South Indian fans are more ardent than those in the rest of the country.

For instance, in the pre-screening of a new movie, they have rituals that may include burning camphor inside a cut pumpkin and shattering it near the big screen as a means of wishing it a good luck. It is even common to find temples named after movie stars.