Vicky Kaushal won the award for Uri: The Surgical Strike.
The National Film Awards, announced today by jury head Rahul Rawail, paid rich dividends for several Bollywood films with Uri's Aditya Dhar being awarded Best Director and male lead Vicky Kaushal sharing the Best Actor prize with Ayushmann Khurrana, whose films AndhaDhun and Badhaai Ho were both rewarded. Uri also won the awards for Background Music and Sound Design; AndhaDhun won Best Hindi Film and the Adapted Screenplay prize for director-writer Sriram Raghavan. The Best Feature Film award went to Gujarati film Hellaro, which also won a Special Jury Award for its cast, but there were plenty of other honours for Bollywood. Sanjay Leela Bhansali's controversial "Padmaavat" struck gold with three awards - Best Music Director for Mr Bhansali, Best Choreography for the song Ghoomar Best Male Playback Singer for Arijit Singh. Badhaai Ho won the prize for Wholesome Entertainment and Best Supporting Actress for Surekha Sikri. PadMan, starring Akshay Kumar, was named Best Film on Social Issues.
Keerthy Suresh won Best Actress for her performance in Mahanati, which also won Best Telugu Film. Lyricist Swanand Kirkire was named Best Supporting Actor for the Marathi film Chumbak.
Hima Das, whose film Village Rockstars was awarded last year and also picked as India's Oscar entry, featured in the honours list again - her film Bulbul Can Sing was named Best Assamese Film. Nathicharami won five awards including Best Kannada Film and a Special Mention for actress Sruthi Hariharan.
Uri director Aditya Dhar said in a statement, "15 years of failure, rejection and hard work have led to this moment and it just can't get better than this." Ayushmann Khurrana said, "Today's honour is a validation of my hard work, my belief system, my journey in movies and my reason to be an actor in the first place." Vicky Kaushal said in a tweet that 'words might fall short to describe the happiness I'm feeling right now."
#NationalFilmAwards pic.twitter.com/Sff7oOC3kB
— Vicky Kaushal (@vickykaushal09) August 9, 2019
This year, the awards were postponed from April-May because of the Lok Sabha elections.
