SIIMA 2013: Dhanush, Shruti, Amala Paul, Rana, Vidyut and Other Stars Attend Day 1 Event [PHOTOS]

The two-day South Indian International Movie Awards (SIIMA) 2013 ceremony kicked-off on 12 September at Expo Centre Sharjah, UAE.

This is the second time the awards ceremony is taking place to honour talented personalities from all four south Indian film industries - Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada. [Also Read: Shahid Kapur, Ileana, Hansika and Other Stars Dazzle at Awards Event (PHOTOS)]

Several celebrities from these four industries arrived in UAE to attend the event. On the first day of the awards ceremony, promising south Indian film artists were honoured at the Generation Next Awards.

The event saw the presence of celebrities including Dhanush, Shruti Haasan, Amala Paul, Kajal Aggarwal, Nisha Aggarwal, Trisha, Charmee, music composer Devi Sri Prasad, Rana Daguubati, Shreya, Srikanth and his wife Vandhana, Vidyut Jamwal, Kannada actress Ragini, Lakshmi Manchu, Navdeep, Priya Mani, Nithya Menon, Allu Sirish, composer Harris Jeyaraj and Praneetha Subash among other film personalities.

The main SIIMA awards ceremony will be held on 13 September.This year's event will be hosted by four popular stars- Arya, Rana Daggubati, Sonu Sood and Shreya. The awards night will witness scintillating performances by some of the biggest stars of south Indian cinema including Shruti, Hansika Motwani, Rima Kallingal, Usha Uthup, Anirudh, Andrea and Lakshmi Menon.

The nominees for SIIMA have been announced under various categories including best actor, best actress, best film and best comedian among others. Talented personalities from all the four film industries will be bestowed with the award. While the nominees were selected by a team of experts, winners will be chosen based on public voting.

In Tamil, Vijay-AR Murugadoss film "Thuppakki" has bagged 10 nominations, whereas Pawan Kalyan's "Gabbar Singh" has got 13 nominations in the Telugu category. Pawan has been nominated in the best actor (Telugu) category for his performance in "Gabbar Singh." Recently, the SIIMA awards committee announced the number of votes received by each Telugu actor nominated in the best actor category, which show that Pawan dominates over others with 69 percent votes. Mahesh Babu comes a distant second with just 23 percent votes.

In Malayalam, Mohan Lal's "Spirit" has been nominated in the highest number of categories, while in Kannada, Puneet Rajkumar's  "Anna Bond" has bagged 10 nominations. [To check the entire nominations list, click here]

Meanwhile check out pictures of celebrities attending the first day event of SIIMA 2013