NEW DELHI/BANGALORE: The Kannada film industry notched up four awards at 58th National Film Awards for the year 2010, which saw Malayalam film Adaminte Makan Abu (Abu, son of Adam), bag the best feature film and it’s star Salim Kumar sharing the best actor honour with Tamil star Dhanush.
While Karnataka’s P Sheshadri with Bettada Jeeva set a record by becoming the first ever director to win national awards consecutively for all six films, Hejjegalu, directed by Ramdas Naidu, has won the Best Children’s Film Award.
Puttakkana Highway, in which Prakash Raj and Shruthi have played important characters, was chosen the best regional film. Manu Chakravathy won with fourth award for the state with the Best Critic Award.
Tamil films won awards in 11 categories, including Best Actor, Best Film and Best Lyricist.
Rajinikanth’s Enthiran won two awards - Best Special Effects (V Srinivas M Mohan) and Sets (Sabu Cyril) - while his son-in-law Dhanush’s Aadukalam, a film based on cockfights in a town, won five for Best Actor (Dhanush), Best Director and Best Screenplay (Vetrimaran), Best Editor (Kishore Te) and Best Choreographer (Dinesh Master).
Thenmerku Paruvakaatru, a film based on the hardships of a widow was awarded Best Tamil Film, and also won its protagonist Saranya Ponvannan the Best Actress award.
Actor Dhanush, who shared the Best Actor Award with Malayalam actor Salim Kumar, spent Thursday at the hospital beside his ailing father-in-law, and was unavailable for comment.
In the awards announced today, Bollywood was pushed to the background this year with the Salman Khan starrer Dabangg and Naseeruddin Shah-Vidya Balan starrer Ishqiya being the only two films to pick up awards in prominent categories.
Dabangg won the award for best popular film providing wholesome entertainment.
Its producers Arbaaz Khan, Malaika Arora Khan and Dhilin Mehta along with director Abhinav Kashyap will receive the Swarna Kamal and a cash prize of `2 lakh.
The best actress award too had two winners — Tamil actress Saranya Ponvannan for Thenmerkku Paruvakkatru and Marathi artiste Mitalee Jagtap Varadkar for Baboo Band Baaja.