‘Kantara,’ ‘Aattam’ Win at India’s National Film Awards

Anand Ekarshi’s Malayalam-language “Aattam” (“The Play”) was named best film on Friday at India‘s National Film Awards. The film also won editing for Mahesh Bhuvanend and original screenplay for Ekarshi.

Sooraj R. Barjatya won best director for Bollywood film “Uunchai,” starring Amitabh Bachchan. Neena Gupta won supporting actress for the film.

Rishabh Shetty’s Kannada-language “Kantara” won the award for ‘best film providing wholesome entertainment,’ while Shetty also won best actor.

The best actress award was shared by Nithya Menen for Tamil-language “Thiruchitrambalam” and Manasi Parekh for Gujarati-language “Kutch Express.” “Thiruchitrambalam” also won the choreography award for Jani Master and Sathish Krishnan, while Niki Joshi won the costume designer award for “Kutch Express.”

Pawan Malhotra won supporting actor for Haryanvi film “Fouja,” which also won best debut director for Pramod Kumar and lyrics for Naushad Sadar Khan. Sreepath won the child actor award for Malayalam-language film “Malikappuram.”

Arpita Mukherjee and Rahul V. Chitella won the dialogue award for “Gulmohar,” which also won best Hindi-language film and scored a special mention for lead Manoj Bajpayee.

Ravi Varman won best cinematography for Mani Ratnam’s “Ponniyin Selvan: Part 1,” which also won best Tamil-language film, background score for A.R. Rahman, and sound design for Anand Krishnamoorthy.

“K.G.F: Chapter 2” won best Kannada-language film and Anbariv for action choreography, while “Karthikeya 2” won best Telugu-language film.

Pritam won best composer for Ayan Mukerji’s Bollywood film “Brahmastra,” for which Arijit Singh won male singer. The same picture also won best film in the animation, visual effects, gaming and comic category for VFX team Jaykar Arudra, Viral Thakkar and Neelesh Gore.

Bombay Jayashree won the female singer for Malayalam-language film “Saudi Vellakka.”

Somnath Kundu won best makeup for Bengali-language film “Aparajito” and Ananda Addhya won production design for the film.

Among the non-fiction categories, Siddhant Sarin’s “Ayena” won best non-feature film, Basti Dinesh Shenoy’s “Madhyantara” best debut and Sohil Vaidya’s “Murmurs of the Jungle” best documentary. Miriam Chandy Menacherry’s “From the Shadows” won best direction.

Joshy Benedict’s “A Coconut Tree” won best animation film.

The award for best book on cinema went to “Kishore Kumar: The Ultimate Biography” by Anirudha Bhattacharjee and Parthiv Dhar.

The awards were delayed due to the COVID pandemic and are presented to films released in 2022.