It was of no surprise to anyone that Akkineni Nageswara Rao would be the first Telugu star to have a film retrospective of his work, marking his centenary on 20 September 2024.
During the 60s, when the South Indian film industries were joined at the hip by being commonly centred in Madras, ANR took the brave decision to move to Hyderabad.
It is difficult to write about ANR without bringing up NTR and vice versa. Together, they were the first Superstar duo who defined Telugu cinema for some three decades.
ANR had never completed high school, thrust onto the stage at a young age and instead chose to learn through his lifetime, quoting Ghalib’s maxim about the virtue of self-awareness.