Posthumous honours for Vinod Khanna, Sridevi at Nat’l Awards
NEW DELHI: The National Film Awards jury on Friday doffed its hat to two of Hindi cinema’s biggest stars who passed away in the year that was, honouring Vinod Khanna with the Dadasaheb Phalke award for lifetime achievement and Sridevi with the best actress prize for “Mom”.
The National Award for best feature film went to the Assamese film “Village Rockstars”, an aspirational tale of a village girl who dreams of making it big. Directed by Rima Das, the critically-acclaimed film also scored for best location, sound recordist, editing and best child artiste (Bhanita Das).
Jayaraj was named best director and the best adapted screenplay writer for his Malayalam film “Bhayanakam”, which also won the best cinematography award.
Riddhi Sen was recognised as the best actor for Kaushik Ganguly’s Bengali film “Nagarkirtan”, which bagged awards in multiple categories -- best costume, makeup and special jury.
Khanna, the suave actor of films such as “Amar, Akbar, Antony” who grew into character roles in his last years, became the 49th recipient of the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, Indian cinema’s highest honour. He is the second person after Prithviraj Kapoor to be named for the honour.
The actor died on April 27 last year at the age of 70 after battling cancer.
Sridevi, whose filmography spanned 50 years and 300 films in languages such as Tamil, Telugu and Hindi, was recognised for her role of an angry mother seeking justice for her daughter in the rape revenge drama “Mom”.
“It was not because of the relationship we shared but because she was the most deserving candidate for her portrayal in ‘Mom’,” jury chairperson Shekhar Kapur, who directed Sridevi in “Mr India”, told reporters.
Her sudden death at the age of 54 in February this year shocked the country.
Oscar-winning music composer A R Rahman swept the best music direction category for the Tamil Film “Kaatru Veliyidai” and the best background music for the Hindi film “Mom”.