Kannada cinema, also known as Sandalwood, or Chandanavana, is the segment of Indian cinema dedicated to the production of motion pictures in the Kannada language widely spoken in the state of Karnataka. The 1934 film Sati Sulochana directed by Y. V. Rao was the first talkie film in the Kannada language. It was also the first film starring Subbaiah Naidu and Tripuramba, and was the first motion picture screened in the erstwhile Mysore Kingdom. The film was produced by Chamanlal Doongaji, who in 1932 founded South India Movietone in Bangalore. Major literary works have been adapted to the Kannada screen such as B. V. Karanth's Chomana Dudi (1975), (based on Chomana Dudi by Shivaram Karanth), Girish Karnad's Kaadu (1973), (based on Kaadu by Srikrishna Alanahalli), Pattabhirama Reddy's Samskara (1970) (based on Samskara by U. R. Ananthamurthy), which won the Bronze Leopard at Locarno International Film Festival, and T. S. Nagabharana's Mysuru Mallige (based on the works of poet K. S. Narasimhaswamy). Kannada cinema is known for producing experimental works such as Girish Kasaravalli's Ghatashraddha (1977), which won the Ducats Award at the Manneham Film Festival Germany, Dweepa (2002), which won Best Film at Moscow International Film Festival, Singeetam Srinivasa Rao's silent film Pushpaka Vimana (1987), Ram Gopal Varma's docudrama Killing Veerappan (2016), Prashanth Neel's action franchise K. G. F. series being the highest-grossing Kannada film, and Rishab Shetty's Kantara (2022). Kannada cinema is reported to have 8% market share in the gross domestic box office collections for the period January to August 2022 making it the fourth biggest Indian film industry. The share rose to 9% by October 2022. The total gross collections of the top five Kannada movies of 2022 in first ten months was reported to be ₹1800 crores. The year 2022 witnessed the beginning of new era for the industry in terms of popularity, quality content and collections. From Wikipedia