Nagesh Kukunoor's Iqbal and Sudhir Mishra's Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi were awarded the first Ramnath Goenka Memorial Awards.
"The award was given to these two films because they reflect the values of our founder Ramnath Goenka," said Shekhar Gupta, CEO and editor-in-chief of The Indian Express.
Sweta Prasad and Naseeruddin Shah were honoured for Best Supporting Roles (in Iqbal) while Abhishek Bachchan was judged the Best Actor in a Comic Role for his performance in Bunty Aur Babli.
Nana Patekar received the Best Actor in a Negative Role award for Apaharan, while Vidya Balan and Shiney Ahuja won the Most Promising Newcomer awards in female and male categories for their performances in Parineeta and Hazaaron Khawashein Aisi respectively.
Shankar-Ehsan-Loy won the Best Music Director award for Bunty Aur Babli while Gulzar was adjudged Best Lyricist. Sonu Nigam and Shreya Ghosal received the Best Vocalist awards (male and female) for Dheere jalna (Paheli) and Piya bole (Parineeta) respectively.
Veeru Devgun, Ajay Devgun's father, was presented the Best Action Director award Ayesha Kapoor was judged Best Child Actor for her role in Black.
The star-studded event saw performances by Akshay Kumar, Rani Mukerji, Bipasha Basu, Shilpa Shetty and Zayed Khan.
Photograph: Pradeep Bandekar