68th National Film Awards: Suriya & Devgn jointly win Best Actor, Aparrna Balamurali bags Best Actress

New Delhi: The 68th National Film Awards were announced on Friday, with Madhya Pradesh winning the Most Film-Friendly State award.

According to an official communiqué, 'Testimony of Ana' bagged the Best Non-Feature Film while 'Soorarai Pottru' won the Best Feature Film award. Suriya and Ajay Devgn were joint winners of the Best Actor Award, while Aparrna Balamurali won the Best Actress award.

The Best Female Playback Singer award was won by Nanchamma for 'AK Ayyappanum Koshiyum' and Rahul Deshpande won the Best Male Playback Singer award.

'Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior' received the award for Best Popular Film Providing Wholesome Entertainment.

Sachidanandan KR won the Best Director award for his Malayalam movie AK Ayyappanum Koshiyum.

Manoj Muntashir won the award for Best Lyrics for the Hindi movie 'Saina'.

Ahead of the announcement of the award, the chairperson and other jury members called on the Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting Anurag Thakur and presented him with the selections for the awards. Thakur has congratulated all the winners and said 2020 was a particularly difficult year for films due to the Covid pandemic, yet the nominations consisted of great works. The Minister also thanked the jury for diligently going through the entries and selecting the best nominees for the awards. The jury comprised of eminent filmmakers and film personalities from across the Indian cine world.

The awards were announced by Chitrartha Singh, chairperson, Non-Feature Jury, Anant Vijay, chairperson, Best Writing on Cinema Jury and Dharam Gulati, Feature Film Jury (Member, Central Panel) in presence of Neerja Sekhar, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.

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