Hindi Films that won 55th National Awards

The verdict of the 55th National Awards for the year 2007 were announced and like always there were quite a few surprises in store. It was the cinema of South India that bagged all the top honours with the Priyadarshan directed Tamil film Kanchivaram bagging the award for Best Feature Film and also fetching Prakash Raj the Best Actor Award.




While Bollywood failed to bag the top four honours, it did quite make up in the other categories. Anil Kapoor's production, Gandhi My Father bagged three awards for Best Screenplay (Feroz Abbas Khan), Best Supporting Actor (Darshan Jariwala) and even won the Special Jury award.

Even Aamir Khan's directorial debut Taare Zameen Par made its mark. The film won awards for Shankar Mahadevan (Best Male Playback Singer) and Prasoon Joshi (Best Lyrics) for the soul-stirring song 'Maa', besides also bagging the Best Film on Family Welfare award.

King of Bollywood, Shahrukh Khan bagged award for Best Film providing Overall Entertainment in the name of Chak De India, Om Shanti Om bagged the award for Best Art Direction (Sabu Cyril). Well deserved...

Rituparno Ghosh's Big B- Arjun Rampal starrer The Last Lear bagged two awards winning the Best Feature Film in English and also fetching Shefali Shah the Best Supporting Actress award while the Shahid- Kareena smash-hit Jab We Met also bagged two awards for Best Choreography and Best Female Playback Singer (Shreya Ghoshal).

The Indira Gandhi award for the Best First Film of a Director went to Frozen while the Nargis Dutt award for Best Film on National Integration went to the Pankaj Kapoor starrer Dharm.

The National Awards has surely brought some really well deserved honours.

Best Directors at Filmfare Awards

Image via Wikipedia

The Filmfare Best Director Award is one of the Popular Award presented by the magazine Filmfare to the directors working in the Indian film Industry. It is a part of the magazine's annual Filmfare Awards for Hindi films and was first presented in 1954 in the inaugral year.


Bimal Roy leads the winners with seven Best Director Filmfare awards, followed by Raj Kapoor and Yash Chopra, with four in kitty. Chopra has the most nominations, 12, followed by Roy with 7, and Raj Kapoor, Gulzar, Subhash Ghai and Mahesh Bhatt with 6 nominations each.

Sai Paranjpye is the only woman to have ever won the Best Director award. She won it for Sparsh in 1985. Paranjpye had earlier been nominated for Chashme Buddoor in 1982. Other women directors to have been nominated are Mira Nair for Salaam Bombay! in 1990 and Farah Khan for Main Hoon Na in 2005 and for Om Shanti Om in 2008.

Bimal Roy also has the distinction of winning the award thrice in a row, on two separate occasions (1954-1956 and 1959-1961). Mahesh Bhatt is the only other director to have been nominated thrice in a row (1984-1986). Also, no director has ever won if he/she has been nominated twice in the same year - Gulzar in 1974, Basu Chatterjee in 1977 and Hrishikesh Mukherjee in 1980.