72nd National Film Awards: Article 370 wins Best Film; Kartik Aaryan, Mammootty take Best Actor

On July 18, 2026, India's film world gathered around the announcement of the 72nd National Film Awards — an annual ritual in which the country's sprawling, polyglot cinema pauses to honor the stories it considers most worthy. The jury, led by filmmaker Jayaraj, had sifted through roughly 400 films certified during 2024 before arriving at its verdicts.

The headline belonged to Article 370, which claimed three of the evening's most coveted prizes: Best Feature Film, Best Actress for Yami Gautam, and Best Music Direction. The film's sweep reflected a jury willing to reward cinema that engages directly with recent political history and asks difficult questions of its audience.

The acting awards told their own story about Indian cinema's breadth. Kartik Aaryan, a star who rose through commercial Hindi films, shared the Best Actor prize with Mammootty, the towering veteran of Malayalam cinema — a pairing that felt less like a compromise and more like an acknowledgment that excellence does not belong to any single industry or generation.

South Indian cinema claimed considerable ground beyond the acting categories. The Tamil film Amaran won Best Director and two additional awards, while Pushpa 2, the Telugu phenomenon, took Best Screenplay and Best Costume Design. Together, these wins reinforced what observers of Indian film have long argued: that the most vital creative energy in the country is no longer centered in any one place.

The jury framed its selections around a mandate for balanced representation — a recognition that Indian cinema is not one tradition but many, and that the awards carry meaning only when they reflect that diversity. As political figures added their congratulations and the conversation spread beyond film circles, the 72nd National Film Awards settled into their familiar role: not just a prize ceremony, but a mirror held up to the stories a nation chooses to tell about itself.