'Baahubali' deserves best film National Award: Filmmakers

Mumbai: Filmmakers including Hansal Mehta, Remo D'Souza and Ronnie Lahiri have supported the jury's decision of honouring "Baahubali" with the best feature film National Award after "Chauthi Koot" director Gurvinder Singh questioned its win.

S S Rajamouli's multilingual magnum opus "Baahubali" was the only film to win in the top category as Bollywood dominated the list of awardess announced yesterday.

Singh, whose film won the National Award best Punjabi film, had said, "Not only me, everybody is saying the decisions are not correct. 'Bahubali' is perhaps the worst film ever to have got a National award. And that too the best film."

But not everybody shares the opinion. When contacted Mehta told PTI, "Awards are decided by jury. People who are not part of it are bound to have their own opinions but I think the jury has given its best. My personal opinion does not matter but I think the jury has been fair".

The "Aligarh" director also feels that Bollywood has not been given any preference at the 63rd National Award.

"I find this argument that National Awards have been Bollywoodised lop-sided. Last year, Bengali films were big winners but no one questioned that. But this time, people are saying regional cinema was ignored."

"ABCD2" helmer D'Souza, who won his debut national award for best choreography in "Bajirao Mastani", said, "It's a brilliant film. I have watched it. It completely deserves the best feature film honour. We should not question jury's decision as they are eminent."

Ronnie Lahiri, whose film "Piku" gave Amaitabh Bachchan his fourth best actor National award, said the Prabhas-starrer film won mainly due to its hype.

"As a producer, 'Piku' did not win in the best feature film category as we were expecting... But I can't question the jury as it has given awards to Mr Bachchan and our writer Juhi Chaturvedi. There was a lot of buzz around Baahubali before its release, so may be that helped."

"Baahubali: The Beginning", also starring Rana Daggubati and Tamannaah, released on July 10. The film also bagged National Award for special effects.