Tamil actor Suriya Sivakumar bagged the award for Best Actor at the 68th National Film Awards on July 22, 2022. The actor shared the award with Bollywood actor, Ajay Devgn, who won the award for his performance in Tanhaji. Suriya was recognised for his performance in the 2020 film, Soorarai Pottru, which was helmed by director Sudha Kongara Prasad.
Soorarai Pottru which was released in 2020 was appreciated by audiences and critics alike for the direction and Suriya's performance. The drama film narrates the story of Maara, who sets out to make his dream of establishing a low-cost airline, and shows the struggles he has to face to make his dream a reality.
The film has won a total of five awards at the ceremony, including the award for Best Film, Best Actress (Aparna Balamurali), Best Screenplay (Sudha Kongara and Mandela, Madonne Ashwin) and Best Music Direction - background score (GV Prakash Kumar).
According to sources, the film is partly based on the events from a memoir of Simplify Deccan's founder, GR Gopinath, titled Simply Fly: A Deccan Odessey. The film was announced in April 2019 and was finally released in November 2020 on Amazon Prime Video. It was also dubbed in Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu.
Sources state that the film was also selected for screening at the 78th Golden Globe Awards and the 93rd Academy Awards.
On July 22, 2022, the winners of the 68th National Film Awards were announced in New Delhi. The prestigious awards are given by the Government of India’s Directorate of Film Festivals. Because of delays due to Covid-19, this year's awards also honoured movies from 2020.
This year’s National Film Award jury was led by filmmaker Vipul Shah, who submitted his report for the awards to Information and Broadcasting minister, Anurag Thakur, earlier today, according to sources.
“I want to congratulate all the jury members and all those people whose work was reviewed and would like to congratulate those recipients who will be awarded the National Film Awards. A word of appreciation for everyone who has done an outstanding job. I am glad that this year, we will be holding the 68th National Film Awards since we could not hold the awards for two years because of Covid (sic),” Anurag was quoted as saying.
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