New Delhi: 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". The best actress prize was shared by Nithya Menen, for the Tamil film "Thiruchitrambalam", and Manasi Parekh for the Gujarati movie "Kutch Express". 'Karthikeya 2' won the national award for the Best Regional Film in Telugu.
'Karthikeya 2,' directed by Chandoo Mondeti and co-produced by Abhishek Agarwal and TG Viswa Prasad, was a mythical thriller that focused on protaganists’ quest to find Lord Krishna’s lost anklet. The film served as a sequel to “Karthikeya”. 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. "It is yet to sink in. I've got two National Awards in the past and I'm getting another National award after many many years, it's a big thing for me," Gupta, who bagged awards for the non-feature "Bazar Sitaram" in 1993 and for "Woh Chokri" in 1994, said.
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.