For as long as most of us have been following Indian cinema’s official honours list, the National Film Awards have meant one familiar image: rows of dignitaries inside Vigyan Bhawan, the President of India handing out medallions as some of the country’s most celebrated actors, directors, writers and technicians walk up to receive them. That picture is about to change. This year, the ceremony is packing up and heading to Gujarat, and the story behind the move is a little more interesting than a simple change of address.
The 72nd National Film Awards will be presented on September 22 at Ekta Nagar, formerly known as Kevadia, in Gujarat’s Narmada district, best known as the home of the Statue of Unity. President Droupadi Murmu is expected to present the honours, maintaining one of the ceremony’s longest-standing traditions even as its familiar Delhi backdrop changes.
How the National Film Awards Actually Began
The awards date back to 1954, when they were instituted by the Government of India under the more modest name of the State Awards for Films. The idea was broader than simply recognising popular Hindi cinema. From the beginning, the awards were intended to encourage aesthetic and technical excellence while acknowledging India’s many regional film industries and languages. The earliest editions were far smaller than what the National Film Awards have since become, with President’s Gold Medals, certificates of merit and awards for regional-language cinema forming the core of the honours. Over seven decades, that system has expanded into one of India’s most comprehensive official recognitions of cinema, covering feature films, non-feature films, documentaries, short films and writing on cinema.
Who Actually Runs the Awards?
The body administering the National Film Awards has changed over time. From their inception, the awards operated under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. The Directorate of Film Festivals later became the principal body responsible for organising the National Film Awards, along with events such as the International Film Festival of India and Indian Panorama. Following the restructuring of several film-related government bodies, responsibility for administering the awards moved to the National Film Development Corporation, which continues to function under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. The institution running the process may have changed, but the National Film Awards remain Government of India honours.
How Are National Film Award Winners Chosen?
This is one of the parts of the awards that often receives less attention than the winners themselves. The awards are not simply decided by ministry officials. Separate juries are constituted for feature films, non-feature films and writing on cinema, drawing on filmmakers, technicians, critics and other professionals associated with cinema.The feature-film selection follows a multi-stage process in which regional panels first examine entries before the shortlisted films move to a national-level jury. The other sections have their own dedicated jury processes. Films are evaluated on elements including artistic merit, technical achievement, storytelling and their contribution to cinema and society. The Dadasaheb Phalke Award, the country’s highest official honour for lifetime contribution to Indian cinema, is considered through a separate selection process. Like most major cultural awards, individual choices can and do generate debate every year. But formally, the winners emerge from these jury processes rather than from a direct decision by the government.
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Why Does the President Present the Awards?
The presence of the President of India has helped distinguish the National Film Awards from commercially organised film ceremonies. From their early years, the awards were positioned not merely as prizes from the entertainment industry but as national honours conferred by the state in recognition of contribution to Indian cinema. That is why the ceremony has traditionally carried a very different tone from the glitzier Bollywood award nights. The emphasis is on formal recognition across industries and languages rather than box-office popularity or celebrity alone. President Droupadi Murmu’s expected presence at Ekta Nagar therefore preserves one of the ceremony’s most important elements even while the venue changes.
Why Did Vigyan Bhawan Become the Awards’ Unofficial Home?
For generations of filmmakers, winning a National Film Award has been closely associated with walking onto the stage at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi. The government convention centre has hosted the ceremony repeatedly over the decades, helped by the obvious practical advantage of being in the national capital, close to Rashtrapati Bhavan, central ministries and other government institutions. Delhi has not been the venue every single time. An early edition of the National Film Awards was held in Chennai in 1971, making it inaccurate to describe this year’s Gujarat ceremony as the first time the awards have ever moved outside the capital. But those exceptions have been rare enough that Vigyan Bhawan effectively became the awards’ permanent visual home. That is precisely why the Gujarat move feels significant.
So Why Gujarat, and Why Now?
The Union government has now made clear that the relocation is not being treated simply as a one-off venue experiment. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has described the decision as part of a major policy initiative to take the National Film Awards beyond the National Capital and hold the ceremony in different parts of the country. That changes the significance of the September 22 event considerably. The move to Ekta Nagar may therefore mark the beginning of a broader decentralisation of one of India’s most prestigious cultural ceremonies, rather than merely a temporary departure from Vigyan Bhawan. The choice also gives Gujarat a high-profile national cultural event at one of its most prominent tourism destinations. Ekta Nagar has grown around the Statue of Unity into a larger tourism and convention destination, and bringing leading figures from Indian cinema there places the region in a very different national spotlight. Local preparations are being made to host hundreds of awardees, film personalities and guests for the ceremony. If the government continues with the policy it has now announced, Gujarat may simply be the first stop in a future National Film Awards circuit that moves through different parts of India.
An Interesting Coincidence at the Statue of Unity
There is another detail that makes this year’s location particularly interesting. Among the winners at the 72nd National Film Awards is Statue of Unity – Ekta Ka Prateek, which received recognition in the non-feature section, including the Best Direction honour for Aanand L Rai. That means a film connected directly to the monument and its larger symbolism will receive its National Film Award in the very region built around the Statue of Unity. There is no official suggestion that this had anything to do with choosing Ekta Nagar as the venue, and it would be misleading to present the two as connected. But it is an unusual coincidence in a year already defined by the decision to take the ceremony away from Delhi.
Who Won at the 72nd National Film Awards?
The 72nd National Film Awards recognise Indian cinema from 2024, with the winners spanning mainstream blockbusters, regional cinema, independent films and non-feature work. Article 370 won Best Feature Film, while its lead actor Yami Gautam received the Best Actress honour. The Best Actor award was shared by Mammootty for the Malayalam film Bramayugam and Kartik Aaryan for Chandu Champion, bringing together two very different performances and film industries in one of the ceremony’s biggest categories. Randeep Hooda received Best Debut Director for Swatantrya Veer Savarkar, his biographical film on Vinayak Damodar Savarkar.
In the non-feature section, Bhangaar won Best Non-Feature Film, while Ram-Nami was named Best Documentary. The Telugu science-fiction epic Kalki 2898 AD won Best Popular Film Providing Wholesome Entertainment, while Captain Miller, starring Dhanush, received the award for Best Feature Film Promoting National, Social and Environmental Values. Films including Amaran, Pushpa: The Rule – Part 2 and Stree 2 also received honours across other categories. In all, dozens of filmmakers, performers, technicians, writers and creators will now make their way not to Delhi, but to Gujarat to collect one of Indian cinema’s most prestigious official honours.
More Than a Change of Venue
For the film industry, the National Film Awards leaving Delhi after decades may initially look like a logistical change. But the government’s new policy gives the move a larger meaning. If future ceremonies are genuinely taken to different parts of the country, an award system originally designed to recognise cinema across India’s languages and regions will also begin travelling physically across those regions. For an institution built around the idea of Indian cinema rather than any single film industry, there is a certain logic to that. The President will still hand over the awards. The medallions and citations will remain the same. The filmmakers walking onto the stage will still come from every corner of the country. Only now, the stage itself may begin travelling too.
