Regional movies sweep National Film Awards; Sooraj Barjatya best director

Regional cinema dominated the National Film Awards announced on Friday with best feature film going to Malayalam movie ‘Aattam: The Play’ and Rishabh Shetty bagging best actor for the Kannada hit ‘Kantara’.

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The best actress prize was shared by Nithya Menen, for the Tamil film ‘Thiruchitrambalam’, and Manasi Parekh for the Gujarati movie ‘Kutch Express’.

The lone Bollywood presence in the top categories for the 70th edition of the national awards was ‘Uunchai’ with Sooraj R Barjatya named best director.

The adventure film, centred on four aging friends readying to scale Mt Everest, also won Neena Gupta a best supporting actress prize.

A big winner in the awards for 2022 was the Haryanvi film ‘Fouja’, which got Pavan Malhotra a best supporting actor and won two other awards -- best debut film of a director for Pramod Kumar and best lyrics to Naushad Sadar Khan.

The awards were announced by Rahul Rawail, head of the jury for the feature film segment, and Nila Madhab Panda, who headed the non-feature film category.

‘Aattam: The Play’, directed by Anand Ekarshi, revolves around a theatre troupe and the changing dynamics after its only woman member alleges she has been groped by one of the men.

To win three National Awards for his maiden film as a director was “incredibly motivating”, said Ekarshi who also won the best screenplay trophy.

“It is extremely motivating and I’m thrilled. People were saying that National awards are going to be announced and something should happen... This is incredibly amazing. Everyone is on cloud nine,” he told PTI.

The film’s third win was for best editing for Mahesh Bhuvanend.