New Delhi, Sep 16 (IANS): The South Indian International Movie Awards (SIIMA) have concluded, and films ‘RRR’, ‘Sita Ramam’, ‘777 Charlie’, ‘Kantara’ and ‘KGF: Chapter 2’ stole the thunder. The award shows ran from September 15-16 in Dubai, with the first night announcing winners in the Telugu and Kannada categories and the second for Tamil and Malayalam.

For the unversed, SIIMA stands to honour the artistry of South Indian cinema in all the four languages: Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada, as well as provide a platform for South Indian cinemas to get more international reception.

South cinema began making some headway into the international markets such as Japan, South Korea, China, Russia, Indonesia and Turkey, primarily due to the charm of superstar Rajinikanth as early as the ‘90s.

Though it only made some major inroads in 2015, with director S.S. Rajamouli’s Telugu epic franchise, ‘Baahubali’, and then exploded with ‘RRR’ in 2022, giving it full attention in the West.

The biggest awards went to the films ‘Sita Ramam’, ‘RRR’, ‘Kantara’, ‘Major’, ‘777 Charlie’ and ‘KGF: Chapter 2’.

In the Telugu category, the biggest competition was between ‘RRR’ and ‘Sita Ramam’, with the latter winning the category for ‘Best Film’ while ‘RRR’ won the award for ‘Best Director’ and ‘Best Actor’. ‘RRR’ led the Telugu race with over 11 nominations, while ‘Sita Ramam’ gave an intense competition with over 10 nods.

This was followed by ‘DJ Tillu’ with over eight nods, ‘Major’ with six, along with ‘Karthikeya 2’, ‘Bheemla Nayak’ and ‘Dhamaka’ with five, ‘Sarkaru Vaari Paata’ with four, ‘Bimbisara’ and ‘Ashoka Vanamlo Arjuna Kalyanam’ with three, and ‘Yashoda’, ‘HIT: The Second Case’, ‘Virata Parvam’ and ‘Masooda’ with two nods.

In the Kannada category ‘KGF: Chapter 2’ led the race with 11 nominations alongside ‘Kantara’. This was followed by ‘Vikrant Rona’ seven, ‘777 Charlie’ with six and ‘Love Mocktail 2’ with five.