Film director Priyadarshan, known better in Bollywood for his comedies, has gone ahead and bagged the National Award for the best film for his off beat effort in Tamil, called 'Kanjivaram'. The film, which has been produced by Percept Picture Company, has come in for a lot of praise from critics around the film as the film has been doing the festival circuit.

The awards for the best actor went to Prakash Raj for his performance in 'Kanjivaram', while the best actress award went to Kannada actress Uma Shri for 'Gulabi Talkies'. Renowned Malayalam director Adoor Gopalakrishnan was honored with the best director award for 'Naalu Pennungal', his seventh award. While it was quite a southern sweep in the main categories, Bollywood managed to claw its way back with Darshan Zariwala receiving the Best Supporting Actor award for Feroz Abbas Khan's 'Gandhi My Father', while Shefali Shah won the Best Supporting Actress award for Rituparno Ghosh's 'The Last Lear'. Aamir Khan's 'Taare Zameen Par' bagged the Best Family Welfare Award. The other winners from that film included lyricist Prasoon Joshi for the song 'Maa', while singer composer Shankar Mahadevan bagged the best male singer award. The best female playback went to Shreya Ghoshal for 'Jab We Met'. Shimit Amin's 'Chak De' won the best film for overall entertainment.