National Film Awards leave Delhi: 92 winners to be honoured at the Statue of Unity

The 72nd National Film Awards will be presented on 22 September at Ekta Nagar in Gujarat's Narmada district, at the foot of the Statue of Unity, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and the Narmada district administration confirmed this week. President Droupadi Murmu will hand the awards to 92 winners. It is the first time in the 72-year history of the prizes that the ceremony leaves Delhi.

The first National Awards were given in 1954 at Vigyan Bhavan. Most later editions stayed in the capital. This year's venue is a temporary German aluminium structural dome in the bus-bay area of the Statue of Unity complex, built for about 1,000 guests and a programme of roughly 75 minutes. District Collector Ganga Singh has chaired meetings on security, protocol and the arrival and departure of the President and the film industry.

The location is not a coincidence on the awards list. Aanand L. Rai won Best Direction in the non-feature category for Statue of Unity - Ekta Ka Prateek, a documentary about the 182-metre statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel that Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated in 2018. The film will be honoured in front of its subject.

The main prizes for films of 2024 have already been announced. Article 370 is Best Feature Film. Yami Gautam takes Best Actress in a Leading Role for the same film. Best Actor in a Leading Role is shared by Mammootty for Bramayugam and Kartik Aaryan for Chandu Champion. Bhangaar is Best Non-Feature Film. Ram-Nami is Best Documentary. Randeep Hooda is Best Debut Director for Swatantrya Veer Savarkar. Tamil film Captain Miller, directed by Arun Matheswaran and starring Dhanush, won Best Feature Film Promoting National, Social and Environmental Values.

Moving the night out of Delhi is a policy change as much as a travel plan. The government has said National Film Awards should rotate through the country rather than remain a capital ritual. Gujarat is the first host under that line. A ceremony at a monument that is also a tourist site folds the awards into the state's own calendar and into the Prime Minister's home-state map. Industry guests will fly into a district that is not a film city. Logistics, not prestige, will decide whether the 75-minute clock holds.

For winners the change is practical. Delhi editions were built around a familiar hotel-and-Vigyan-Bhavan loop. Ekta Nagar requires a different protocol file: river-side security, helicopter and road movements for the President, and a dome that did not exist last month. The district administration's 7 September note is the first public confirmation that the infrastructure is being raised on the bus bay rather than inside an existing auditorium.

The awards themselves remain a government prize, judged by a ministry-appointed jury, not an academy vote. That has always been the difference between the National Awards and industry nights in Mumbai. Taking the function to the Statue of Unity does not change the jury. It changes the picture that will be sent out on 22 September: a President, 92 citations, and a 597-foot statue in the same frame as a documentary that already won for filming it.

Whether the rotation lasts will be clear only when the 73rd edition is sited. If the next ceremony returns to Vigyan Bhavan, Gujarat will have been a one-off. If it moves again, to another state and another monument, the 72nd edition will be remembered as the year the National Awards left Delhi and did not come back as a default.

Until then the work in Narmada is concrete. A dome has to stand, a guest list of about 1,000 has to move, and the President has to present 92 awards in a little more than an hour. That is a tighter show than most Delhi editions. The statue will not be the difficult part.