Alia Bhatt, Kriti Sanon and Allu Arjun receive India's 69th National Film Award for best actors

Bollywood superstars Alia Bhatt and Kriti Sanan have been awarded the joint National Film Award for Best Actress while Allu Arjun has bagged the award for Best Actor.

The 69th National Film Awards were announced during a press conference in New Delhi on Thursday and it is the first time for the three artists to win a National Award simultaneously.

Alia Bhatt won the award for the best performance in the film Gangubai Kathiawadi, Kriti Sanon for Mimi, and South Indian actor Allu Arjun was awarded for his performance in Pushpa: The Rise.

Rocketry: The Nambi Effect won the Best Feature Film award while Pankaj Tripathi won the Best Supporting Actor award for Mimi. Also, RRR won the Best Popular Film award while Shreya Ghoshal was given the Best Female Playback Singer award. 

All the artists will be given these awards at the end of this year by Indian President Draupadi Murmu in a grand ceremony.

The Kashmir Files won the Nargis Dutt Award for Best Film on National Integration at the 69th National Film Awards. Shoojit Sircar’s biographical historical drama Sardar Udham won several awards at the 69th National Film Awards also bagging Best Cinematography (Avik Mukhopadhyay), Best Audiography (Sinoy Joseph), Best Production Design (Dmitrii Malich and Mansi Dhruv Mehta) and Best Costume Design (Veera Kapur Ee) awards.

Gangubai Kathiawadi is a 2022 Indian Hindi-language biographical crime drama film directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali starring Alia Bhatt in the title role, alongside Shantanu Maheshwari, Vijay Raaz, Indira Tiwari, Seema Pahwa, Jim Sarbh and Ajay Devgn. The film was released in theatres on 25 February 2022.

Mimi is a 2021 Indian Hindi-language comedy-drama film directed by Laxman Utekar starring Kriti Sanon in the eponymous lead, Pankaj Tripathi, Sai Tamhankar, Manoj Pahwa, Supriya Pathak, Evelyn Edwards and Aidan Whytock. The film was released through the platforms on 26 July 2021.

Pushpa: The Rise – Part 01 is a 2021 Indian Telugu-language action drama film[17] written and directed by Sukumar. Pushpa: The Rise was released on 17 December 2021.