Court , a little known quadrilingual film, emerged as the best feature film while Kangana Ranaut was adjudged the best actress for her critically acclaimed and commercially successful title role in Vikas Bahl’s Queen at the 62nd National Film Awards announced here on Tuesday.
Court , directed by Chaitanya Tamhane, depicts the “mundaneness of judicial procedure” and the “heart-wrenching insensitivity of institutional structures.” It was released last year in Hindi, English, Marathi and Gujarati and tells the story of the trial of an ageing folk singer charged with abetting the suicide of a sewage worker through his music.
Best director
Srijit Mukherji won the best director and best screenplay awards for the Bengali thriller Chotushkone , a film about four directors coming together for a film with four different stories, all thematically connected by a common thread — death. The film also won the best cinematography award for Sudeep Chatterjee.
Kannada actor Vijay won the best actor award for “his subtle and non-stereotypical” portrayal of a woman trapped in a man’s body for Nanu Avanalla Avalu , a film on transgenders.
Haider , director Vishal Bharadwaj's adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet , won the most awards for one feature film, bagging best music direction and best dialogue (Vishal Bharadwaj), best male playback singer (Sukhwinder Singh for ‘ Bismil ’), best choreography (Sudesh Adhana for ‘ Bismil ’) and best costumes (Dolly Ahluwalia).
The Priyanka Chopra-starrer Mary Kom , a biopic of the celebrated boxer M.C. Mary Kom, was declared the best popular film providing wholesome entertainment.
Bobby Simhaa won the best supporting actor award for Tamil film Jigarthanda , while Baljinder Kaur was adjudged best supporting actress for Haryanvi film Pagdi:The Honour .
For his directorial debut, Bengali filmmaker Aditya Vikram Sengupta won the Indira Gandhi award for best debut film for Asha Jaoar Majhe (Labour of Love).
Malayalam film Ottaal , based on Anton Chekhov's short story Vanka , was adjudged the best film on environmental conservation and also bagged the best adapted screenplay award (Joshy Mangalnath). The jury described the film, directed by Jayaraaj, as “a visual poem”, expressing the “beauty and serenity of the protagonist’s rural environment and a way of life whose value is measured by the poignancy of its loss”.
Tamil film Saivam won the best female playback singer (Uttara Unnikrishanan) and best lyrics (N.A. Muthukumar) awards for the song ‘ Azhagu ’.
Jury panels
Three jury panels judged the films before finalising the awardees. Tamil filmmaker P. Bharathiraja headed the feature film panel while The Hindu 's Zia Us Salam was part of the panel of judges on film-writing.
Corrections and Clarifications
>> Queen’s director name was misspelled as Vijay Bahl instead of Vikas Bahl in a report, >Queen reins at National Awards (March 25, 2015)
