Southern cinema sweeps National Awards

Southern cinema made a clean sweep at the 55th National Awards announced today. Bollywood stars like Shah Rukh Khan and Aamir Khan lost out to Prakash Raj, who bagged the award for Best Actor for his work in Priyadarshan's brilliant Tamil film Kanjeevaram. The film also bagged the Best Film award.

The Best Actress award went to Uma Shree for Girish Kasaravalli's Kannada film Gulabi Talkies.

Adoor Gopalakrishnan bagged the Best Director award for his Malayalam film, Naalu Pennungal. His film won the Best Editing award as well.

Taare Zameen Par bagged the Best Family Welfare Film Title while Shankar Mahadevan bagged the Best Playback Singer for its song, Maa. Prasoon Joshi bagged the Best Lyrics award for the same song.

Pankaj Kapur-starrer Dharam bagged the Nargis Dutt award for Best Feature on National Integration while Chak De! India bagged an award for Best Film in overall entertainment.

Feroz Abbas Khan bagged the Best Screenplay award for his film Gandhi, My Father. His film also bagged the Grand Jury award. Darshan Jariwala, who played Gandhi, bagged the Best Supporting Actor for the film.

The Best Child Actor award has gone to Sharad Goyekar for his role in the Marathi film Tingya.

Among other notable winners was Hindi film Frozen, which won the Indira Gandhi award for Best First Film of a Director, for its maker Shivajee Chandrabhushan. The film also bagged an award for Best Cinematography.

Hindi film Foto won the best children's film award, while Inimey Naangathaan (Tamil) won the best animation film award.

Shefali Shah won the Best Supporting Actress award for English film The Last Lear and Shreya Ghosal won the Best Female Playback Singer award for the film Jab We Met. The Yeh Ishq Hai song from the same film won an award for Best Choreography. Farah Khan's Om Shanti Om won an award for Best Art Direction.

Manoj Bajpai-starrer 1971 won the best audiography award and also bagged the award for Best Film in Hindi under the language specified in schedule VIII of the Constitution category. In the same category saw other winners like Ballygunge Court (Bengali), Gulabi Talkies' (Kannada), Ore Kadal (Malayalam), Nirop (Marathi), Periyar (Tamil) and The Last Lear (English).

Rajnikanth-starrer Sivaji:The Boss won a award for Best Special Effects.

What do you think of the National Awards this year? Have your say!