When the call came, Mammootty was in Chennai. The 74-year-old actor, whose face has been a constant of Indian cinema for over half a century, learned that his performance as a demonic landlord in the black-and-white Malayalam horror drama Bramayugam had won him a fourth National Film Award for Best Actor. The gap since his last win, for Dr Ambedkar in 1999, stretched across 28 years. In New Delhi, an 11-member jury led by filmmaker Jayaraj had just finished reading out the citations, and the news was already rippling through the southern film industries, where the veteran star’s win was received less as a comeback than as a reaffirmation of a career that has refused to settle into any single register.

Across the full list of winners, the jury spread its recognition wide, but a pattern was visible. The top feature film honour went to Article 370, a Hindi-language political thriller that dramatises the covert operations surrounding the 2019 revocation of Jammu and Kashmir’s special constitutional status. Its lead, Yami Gautam, took Best Actress for her portrayal of an intelligence officer. The film, produced by her husband Aditya Dhar, also won for its music direction. In a year when the Central Board of Film Certification’s eligibility window captured a particularly fragmented cinematic landscape—stretching from the Telugu mythological sci-fi spectacle Kalki 2898 AD to the independent Kannada child-trauma drama Mithya—the jury’s choices sketched a portrait of an industry negotiating the pull between state-facing narratives, regional storytelling traditions, and the sheer scale of pan-Indian commercial ambition.

That negotiation was most visible in the acting categories, which the jury split between established veterans and a younger generation of stars. Kartik Aaryan shared the Best Actor prize with Mammootty for his physical transformation into Paralympian Murlikant Petkar in Chandu Champion, a performance that critics in Mumbai noted for its departure from the actor’s earlier romantic-comedy persona. The supporting categories recognised Sanjay Mishra for the Hindi investigative journalism drama Bhakshak, while the Kannada film Mithya and the Tamil film Maharaja shared the Best Supporting Actress award between Roopashre Varkady and Sachana Namidass. Tamil actor-filmmaker Dhanush received a special mention for Captain Miller, and his directorial work Raayan was named Best Tamil Film, adding to a body of work that, viewed from Chennai, continues to blur the line between mainstream stardom and auteur ambition.

The regional language awards told their own story of an ecosystem in quiet flux. The Telugu industry, which dominated box-office charts in 2024 with Pushpa 2: The Rule, saw that film win for original screenplay and costume design, while the nostalgic friendship drama Committee Kurrollu took Best Telugu Film. In Kannada, Mithya’s triple win—Best Kannada Film, Best Child Artist, and Best Supporting Actress—was read in Bengaluru as a signal that the industry’s independent spirit, championed by producer-actor Rakshit Shetty, was finding institutional recognition. The Malayalam industry, beyond Mammootty’s win, saw Feminichi Fathima named Best Malayalam Film and singer Vaikom Vijayalakshmi win Best Female Playback Singer for the fantasy action film ARM. A Tulu film, Imbu, and a Garhwali film, Dholi, also found space on the honours list, a reminder of the linguistic breadth that the National Awards are structurally designed to accommodate.

In the days following the announcement, the reactions from the winners traced a common thread of personal milestone. Yami Gautam posted a note describing the award as the culmination of a fourteen-year journey, calling the film “never just another film for me” and framing the recognition as “the beginning of a greater responsibility.” Randeep Hooda, who won Best Debut Director for his biopic Swatantrya Veer Savarkar, said the project “asked more of me than anything I’ve ever done.” But the lasting image from this year’s awards may belong to Mammootty, who earlier in 2026 received the Padma Bhushan, India’s third-highest civilian honour, and whose Bramayugam had just months before been screened at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles. The film’s cinematographer, Shehnad Jalal, also won a National Award for his work on the project—a monochrome horror film, shot in Kerala, now carrying the imprimatur of both a Hollywood institution and the Indian state.