MUMBAI: Mani Ratnam‘s Raavanan is now part of the permanent collection of the Austrian Film Museum that houses 25, 500 films.

Director of the museum Alexander Horwath was trying to get a copy of the film ever since he saw it at the Venice Film Festival (VFF) last year, where Ratnam received the ‘Glory to the Filmmaker Award’. "It was a glorious evening and Raavanan was screened after the award ceremony," Horwath reportedly said on the sidelines of the VFF.

Starring Aishwarya Rai, Abhishek Bachchan and southern star Vikram, the bilingual was released in Hindi as Raavan while the Tamil version was called Raavanan.

Howarth, however, regrets that of the total films in the library only 15 are from India. This includes three films of Satyajit Ray and Yash Raj Film’s Veer Zaara.

The museum is also home to a library with more than 20,000 books and 200 magazine titles covering a broad range of film-related topics.