‘Seetharamaraju’ completes 26 years

Director YVS Chowdhary’s second film ‘Seetharamaraju’,a big multi-starrer was released on February 5, 1999. It completed 26 years and the interesting point about this film is that the next generation actors from the popular Nandamuri and Akkineni family acted in this film. Akkineni Nagarjuna and Nandamuri Harikrishna played the lead roles of Sethayya and Ramaraju and the credit goes to YVS Chowdhary.
After NTR and ANR, their next generation didn’t act in any film jointly until ‘Seetharamaraju’. According to reports, YVS Chowdhary first narrated the story to Nagarjuna which he accepted and asked about the second lead actor. Chowdhary replied immediately that it was Harikrishna. Nagarjuna had doubts about Harikrishna acting in a film at that time as the latter didn’t show interest.
Incidentally, Harikrishna played a cameo in ‘Sri Ramulayya’ film that stars Mohan Babu and Soundarya. So, YVS Chowdhary insisted on Harikrishna to act in ‘Seetharamaraju’,  and so he did. Along with them, Ravi Teja, Brahmaji, Sanghavi, Sakshi Sivananad, Kota Srinivasa Rao, Chandra Mohan and many other actors are there. It had a big star cast and the big twist in the film was Nirmalamma. The actress normally played as mother, grandmother and soft roles in many films, but in this film YVS Chowdhary made her a villain in the climax, which was a big twist at that time. The film was a big hit at the box office and brought profits for the producers. Nagarjuna is also one of the producers of this film. MM Keeravani is the music director, while Sirivennela Seetharama Sastry penned the lyrics. The film won two Nandi Awards at that time.