At the pre-release event of Acharya, Chiranjeevi praised the director Rajamouli for placing Telugu cinema on the world map Actor Chiranjeevi shared an interesting incident where he felt humiliated about the under representation of South cinema and praised director Rajamouli for bringing glory to Telugu cinema with his films. The Megastar also felicitated the Master filmmaker at the pre-release event of his upcoming film Acharya. “In 1988, I did a film called ‘Rudraveena’ produced by my brother Naga Babu. It got the ‘Nargis Dutt National Integrity Award’. We went to Delhi to receive the award. Prior to the awards ceremony, there was a ‘High Tea’ reception and we were sitting in the main hall and drinking tea. The walls were adorned with posters of stalwarts from Hindi cinema. But apart from a dance still of Jayalalitha and MGR and a photograph of Prem Nazir, there was absolutely no kind of representation for South cinema. No Rajkumar, no Vishnu Vardhan, no NTR or ANR, no Sivaji Ganesan! At that moment, I felt really humiliated. Only Hindi cinema was being projected as Indian cinema. I came back to Chennai and spoke about my feelings to the media. ‘The Hindu’ newspaper gave my statement good coverage but nothing actually happened. There was no answer to me until ‘Baahubali’, ‘Baahubali 2’ and ‘RRR’ happened. These films made me hold my head up high and proudly affirm that we are Telugus, creators of Indian cinema that enthralled and surprised everyone. The credit for removing these geographical barriers goes entirely to Rajamouli. He brought respect and pride to our industry and fulfilled my dream” said Chiranjeevi while speaking at the pre-release event of ‘Acharya’. He further added, “We are proud that Rajamouli is a Telugu technician. Telugu cinema industry shall and should never forget him. There is no regional cinema anymore, it’s only Indian cinema and if Indian cinema is a religion, then Rajamouli is its Abbot. He is a demi-god who has taken our cinema to national and international level”. The pre-release event concluded with a felicitation ceremony for Rajamouli by actor Chiranjeevi.