Anant Nag to receive the 2024 Dadasaheb Phalke Award in Kevadia

The Union government on 16 September named Anant Nag as the recipient of the Dadasaheb Phalke Award for 2024. The citation will be presented on 22 September at the 72nd National Film Awards ceremony in Kevadia, Gujarat. The prize is a Swarna Kamal, a shawl and ₹10 lakh.

The Press Information Bureau said the selection committee recommended the actor for a career of more than five decades and for work that has shaped Indian cinema, above all Kannada cinema. Nag was born on 4 September 1948 in Karnataka. He debuted in the Kannada film Sankalp and in Hindi in Shyam Benegal's Ankur. The official note puts his filmography above 300 titles across Kannada, Hindi, Telugu, Malayalam, Tamil and Marathi. Other counts used in newsrooms sit above 250. He is also a theatre actor. He received the Padma Bhushan in 2025.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated him on the day of the announcement and pointed to natural playing, range and a long mark on Kannada films. Karnataka Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar issued his own message. Nag told interviewers he was dedicating the award to the people of Karnataka, as he had dedicated the Padma Bhushan when President Droupadi Murmu conferred it. He said the mix of art cinema and commercial work that defined his career would have been hard to find in another state.

Second from Karnataka, first for Kannada acting

Cinematographer V.K. Murthy, born in Mysore, received the Phalke Award in 2008 for work done largely in Hindi cinema, including Guru Dutt's films. Nag is therefore the second artist from the state to take the honour and the first whose citation rests on a Kannada-centred acting life. Last year's recipient was Mohanlal. The 2024 label on a 2026 ceremony is a lag that began in the pandemic years and has not been fully closed.

The films most often listed with his name are Minchina Ota, Hamsageethe, Ankur, Manthan and the television series Malgudi Days. That list is not a complete account. It is the public shorthand for a career that moved between parallel cinema and the Kannada mainstream without treating either as a detour. He has five Karnataka State Awards, including a lifetime honour.

Asked about the selection system, Nag said nepotism and favouritism had existed and that the present government had changed the process. That is his description, not a documented audit of every committee. The Phalke Award is decided by a panel constituted by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. The ministry published the name. The ceremony is six days away.

What the date in Kevadia does

National Film Awards have been staged away from Delhi before. Putting the 72nd edition in Kevadia places the highest cinema honour next to the Statue of Unity and inside a Gujarat events calendar. For Nag the location is secondary to the citation. For Kannada producers and film schools the citation is a claim they can use: the state's acting tradition now sits on the same shelf as the Hindi and Malayalam names that have dominated the Phalke list.

He is 77 or 78 depending on the birthday count used in a given dispatch. He is still working. The award does not close a career. It fixes a public rank for a body of work that was already finished in all the ways that matter to archives: hundreds of roles, a Benegal debut, a television serial that still circulates, and a home industry that treated him as a default serious lead for decades.

The useful check after 22 September is not the speech. It is whether the National Film Archive and streaming catalogues treat the citation as a reason to restore and subtitle the Kannada titles that never travelled as far as Ankur.