The film was named among the year’s Top 10 films by America’s National Board of Review, has secured five Critics Choice Award nominations, and earlier this month Rajamouli was named best director by the New York Film Critics Circle.

These awards-season bellwethers have sparked murmurs that the film could be poised to receive attention in numerous categories when the Academy Awards nominations are unveiled on January 24.

All this despite the film being passed over as India’s official entry for the Best International Feature Film category at the Oscars in favour of Pan Nalin’s rather less inspiring Last Film Show.

For fans of Rajamouli’s work back home, this level of acclaim and attention has been a long time coming. In his 20-year career, he has won a number of prestigious domestic accolades, including three National Film Awards, four Filmfare Awards South, and five Nandi Awards.

In 2015 he was presented with a CNN-News18 Indian of the Year award for his work in the entertainment industry. Previous winners have included such film industry heavyweights as Aamir Khan and Amitabh Bachchan.

Rajamouli has scored a number of commercial hits. Topping that list is 2017’s Baahubali 2: The Conclusion, the most successful film of all time in India, boasting a box office haul of 1,429 crore (US$175 million). Then there’s RRR with 944 crore, the third most successful film in India, and Baahubali: The Beginning (2015) with 520 crore, the fifth most successful.

Most impressive, however, is that this success comes despite Rajamouli’s films being produced in Telugu and Tamil languages, native to Southern India, rather than in the more commercially traditional Hindi language favoured by Bollywood.

‘A disaster for Bollywood’? Films flop as Indians pivot to streaming services

Rajamouli’s success in expanding the regional cinema of South India into the rest of the country, not to mention internationally, has elevated him to almost folk-hero status among his most devoted fans.

This is fitting, perhaps, considering that many of the director’s most successful films champion larger-than-life protagonists whose struggles are brought to life on screen in almost mythic scale.

Magadheera (2009) is a perfect example of the type of Telugu movie upon which Rajamouli built his reputation, a riotous three-hour roller coaster packed with action, romance, humour and, of course, show-stopping song-and-dance numbers.

In that film, RRR leading man Ram Charan stars as Harsha, a daredevil street-bike racer who falls for the beautiful Indu (Kajal Aggarwal), only to discover that she is being pursued by her wealthy cousin, Raghuveer (Dev Gill).

Determined to claim Indu for himself, Raghuveer murders her father and frames Harsha for the crime. But the action doesn’t really take off until Harsha is magically transported back to the 17th century, where Raghuveer’s ancestor (Gill again) is poised to invade a kingdom ruled by a beautiful Princess (also played by Aggarwal).

Embodying his own heroic ancestor, Harsha finds himself once more competing for the hand of the woman he loves in a duel to the death.

Want more after Alienoid and Warriors of Future? 10 Asian sci-fi must-sees

The film features a number of themes and motifs that emerge time and again throughout Rajamouli’s body of work, even as he attempts to strip away some of Telugu cinema’s more parochial characteristics in favour of something more polished, elevated and ultimately universal.

Nowhere is this shift more evident than in the director’s next film, 2012’s deliriously high-concept revenge thriller Eega.

What begins as a seemingly conventional romantic comedy, in which hapless hero Nani (played by the actor known as Nani) hopes to woo beautiful girl-next-door Bindu (Samantha Ruth Prabhu), takes a mind-blowing turn when Nani is viciously murdered by Sudeep (Sudeepa Sanjeev), a wealthy rival for Bindu’s affections, and reincarnated as a housefly.

Desperate to expose his killer and save the oblivious Bindu, this diminutive winged avenger takes centre stage for a hilarious showdown of buzzing psychological torment.

Eega’s eye-catching premise and slick, envelope-pushing execution caught the attention of genre film fans outside India, who might not otherwise be drawn to the broad humour and culturally specific references that define the regional Telugu film industry – not dissimilar to Hong Kong’s own locally honed style of histrionic comedy high jinks.

Due in part to Eega’s escalating production costs, Rajamouli stripped away many of these elements to make his film more accessible to India’s national filmgoing public. It was a gamble that paid off. Eega became the most successful Telugu film of 2012 nationwide, and set the tone for the director’s style going forward.

Rajamouli was now free to embark on his passion project, Baahubali, a two-part period fantasy epic penned by his father and regular writing partner Vijayendra Prasad, and starring Indian superstar Prabhas in a dual leading role.

It tells the story of an orphan child, Shivudu, raised by villagers at the foot of a giant mountain. When he comes of age, he (now played by Prabhas) scales the mountain, only to discover that he is really Baahubali, heir to the throne of a powerful kingdom.

Through substantial flashbacks, Shivudu learns about his father (also portrayed by Prabhas), and the devious plot to steal the throne from him.

Unprecedented in scale at the time of release, Baahubali: The Beginning (2015) and its sequel, Baahubali 2: The Conclusion (2017), both in turn became the most expensive Indian film of all time, prompting a mould-breaking multi-language release across India that shattered records for Telugu language cinema.

So why RRR and why now?

First, the film unites two of South Indian cinema’s biggest stars, Jnr NTR and Ram Charan, together on screen for the first time.

Although a fictional story, the drama unfolds during the British occupation, which is perhaps a more familiar setting for international audiences.

RRR is also available globally on Netflix (albeit dubbed into Hindi); accessibility has often been an obstacle for Indian films hoping to break out in the past.

Ultimately, however, RRR is being embraced so enthusiastically because it is great fun.

It is a visually audacious tale of earnest rebellion against an almost cartoonishly oppressive regime, built around the superhuman heroics of two effortlessly charismatic leads and propelled by dizzying action set pieces.

It also features the year’s catchiest song, “Nattu Nattu”, which recently won a historic Golden Globe for best original song - the first Golden Globe won by an Indian film.

Believe the hype, Rajamouli is the RRR-eal deal.