Chiranjeevi honoured with Indian Film Personality of the Year Award at IFFI 2022

Superstar Chiranjeevi has been named the Indian Film Personality of the Year at the opening ceremony of the 53rd edition of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa.

The special announcement was made by the Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting Anurag Thakur at the film festival. However, the actor was not present at the festival. Anurag Thakur also took to his Twitter account and congratulated Chiranjeevi."INDIAN FILM PERSONALITY @IFFIGoa..Sh Chiranjeevi Ji has had an illustrious career spanning almost four decades, w/ over 150 films as an actor, dancer & producer. He is immensely popular in Telugu Cinema w/ incredible performances touching hearts! Congratulations @KChiruTweets," Anurag Thakur tweeted.

INDIAN FILM PERSONALITY @IFFIGoa

Sh Chiranjeevi Ji has had an illustrious career spanning almost four decades, w/ over 150 films as an actor, dancer & producer.

He is immensely popular in Telegu Cinema w/ incredible performances touching hearts!

Congratulations @KChiruTweets! pic.twitter.com/ZIk0PvhzHX

— Anurag Thakur (@ianuragthakur) November 20, 2022

The honour has made Chiranjeevi's fans extremely happy."Oh wow...super deserving," a social media user commented."Congratulations Chiranjeevi. You are the best actor," another one wrote.

In a career spanning over four decades, Chiranjeevi, 66, has been the recipient of numerous awards and accolades including 10 Filmfare awards and 4 Nandi awards. He was recently seen in Godfather, which also stars Salman Khan

Earlier, the 66-year-old star of Telugu cinema said he is proud that filmmaker SS Rajamouli's Baahubali movie series and latest release RRR have helped make southern cinema popular across the country as well as globally.

In 1988, Chiranjeevi had flown down to Delhi for the National Film Awards and found that the organisers knew little about South cinema. Even the hoardings were dominated by Bollywood stars.

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"It was very humiliating for me. I felt insulted, very hurt that Indian cinema meant only Hindi cinema and was projected thus for a long time. But films like 'Baahubali' and 'RRR' overcame barriers and proved they are also Indian cinemas," Chiranjeevi's said recently at a pre-release event of his latest film "Acharya".

The actor said he visited Delhi to attend the National Film Awards as his co-co-production "Rudraveena" was to be given the Nargis Dutt Award for Best Feature Film on National Integration.

"We were sipping tea in the hall adorned with posters highlighting the glory of the Indian cinema. There were some footnotes for the posters put up on the walls. There were photos of Prithiviraj Kapoor, Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand, Amitabh Bachchan, Rajesh Khanna and Dharmendra. They glorified various directors and heroines and we thought they would also talk about South Indian cinema in such great detail.

"But they just displayed a huge still of MGR (M G Ramachandran) and Jayalalithaa dancing and described it as South Indian cinema. Besides, a picture of Prem Nazir, who played a hero in the highest number of films in the history of Indian cinema, was shown," he said. (With inputs from ANI and PTI)