New Delhi: Bollywood triumphed at the 57th National Awards by winning 15 awards, including the best actor prize that went to megastar Amitabh Bachchan for his performance as a 13-year-old in Paa.
The other top honours went to the Malayalam film Kutty Srank for best film, Rituparno Ghosh for best director for Abohoman and Ananya Chatterjee as best actress for the same movie.
After Ageepath and Black, this the third best actor National Award for Amitabh, 67, who played a progeria patient in R. Balakrishna's movie Paa and spent almost five hours to get his de-aged look.
Paa also won the best make-up artist award for Hollywood's Christien Tinsley and Dominie Till. The best supporting actress went to Arundhati Naag who played Big B's grandmother in the movie.
Made at a budget of Rs10.5 milion (Dh800,000), critically acclaimed Paa, which was produced by AB Corp and distributed by Reliance Big Pictures, also got best Hindi language film award.
"It was a unanimous decision by the jury... nobody better than Amitabh Bachchan could have performed the role of Auro in Paa. He stood out in his performance throughout the film. It is not easy to maintain the body language and the voice," said filmmaker Ramesh Sippy, chairperson, feature films, 57th National Film Awards.
