Andhrites, used to either action-packed movies or mushy love stories, have a very different fare from Tollywood this week. A film opposing SEZs and another glorifying Telangana hit the screens on Thursday. The third, equally or perhaps more important, is about actor Chiranjeevi.

Apart from SEZs and Telangana, Chiranjeevi is a hot topic not merely because of his closely guarded political intentions but because the film Parugu is based on the mega-star and glorifies the actor as a father and brings out the conflict between two generations. In the light of his daughter Sreeja eloping with an engineering student, the film claims to be about “every father who has a daughter”. The film’s theme has raised everyone’s curiosity, not to mention the mega-star’s of fans fearing whose wrath Sreeja and her husband Shirish Bhardwaj fled to Delhi and sought protection. Parugu, meaning ‘run’, stars Chiranjeevi’s nephew Allu Arjun in the lead role.

When revolutionary filmmaker R Narayana Murthy began shooting his film Èrra Samudram (Red Sea), he knew there would be a number of hurdles. But he was not prepared for the demands put up by CBFC. Èrra Samudram is about how the SEZ boom in the state has taken away lands of poor farmers and increased the rich-poor divide. It critises the state’s and the Centre’s policy on SEZs.

Murthy wanted to showcase the plight of tribals in a village in Vizag district where Jindals are setting up an aluminum ore plant and wanted to use real names. But the CBFC asked him not to use names that sounded like ‘Jindal’.

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