The winners of the country’s most prestigious cinema honor, the National Film Awards, have been announced. This time, Tamil film ‘Ponniyan Selvan’ won maximum 4 awards. At the same time, Bollywood film ‘Brahmastra’ also reached this level by winning 3 awards. Like every time, there was a lot of excitement among the cinema fans to see the names of their favorite films and artists in the list of National Awards.
But some fans on social media were disappointed after not seeing the name of Vikrant Massey’s film ’12th Pass’ in this list. This film of director Vidhu Vinod Chopra, released last year, deeply touched the emotions of the public and was also one of the biggest hits of 2023.
Vikrant’s work also impressed the audience a lot and after seeing his work, as soon as they came out of the theatre, people started saying that this is a National Award winning performance. Then why did the name of this film disappear from the list of the 70th National Film Awards? Even after watching ‘Chandu Champion’ released this year, fans started running a campaign on social media that Karthik Aryan deserves a National Award for this. But this film was also not named in the announcement of National Awards. Let us tell you why this happened…
’12th failed’ was not in the race itself
Although the winners of the National Film Awards are announced directly, unlike the Popular Film Industry Awards, no nomination list is announced. Therefore, it cannot be clearly said which films are the jury’s favorites in the awards race. Still, due to the general feeling of the audience and critics about the films, people try to guess which film is ahead in the race for National Film Awards. But ’12th Fail’ could not have been in the race for the National Award this time, there is a very technical reason for this.
The 70th National Film Awards are given for those films which have been given censor certificate by the Film Censor Board between January 1, 2022 and December 31, 2022. Whereas, in December 2022, the shoot of Vikrant Massey’s ’12th Fail’ had ended.
This film got the censor certificate (this certificate is displayed at the beginning of the film) on 6 October 2023 and it was released in theaters on 27 October. That means it was not in the cut off date of the 70th National Film Awards. This also means that if you are a fan of ’12th Fail’ then do not be disappointed, this film will be in the race for the next i.e. 71st National Awards.
For this very reason, Karthik Aryan’s ‘Chandu Champion’ was also not in the race for awards this time, because its censor certificate was received on 31 March 2024. And the opportunity for Karthik’s film to go before the jury for the National Awards is due to the 72nd National Film Awards.
Covid caused all the confusion
Actually, all this confusion is because the National Film Awards held every year were given for the films which got censor certificate last year. That means, if the list of award winners is being announced in 2024, then the general sense is that the films released in 2023 have received awards in it. But when the world came to a halt due to Covid 19, not only the films but the awards also came to a halt. Therefore, the awards for the films of 2020 which were to be announced in 2021, were announced in 2022. And in everyone’s mind, the gap of one year was now 2 years.
This confusion further increased when Alia Bhatt received awards for ‘Gangubai Kathiawadi’ and ‘The Kashmir Files’ in 2023, because these films were released in 2022. But actually it had received the censor certificate in 2021 and its release was postponed due to Covid 19. And that is why these films got the award in the same list, which included Allu Arjun starrer ‘Pushpa: The Rise’, released in 2021.
This time what happened was that as soon as people came to know about the announcement of the National Film Award, everyone, according to the already existing normal idea, chose their favorites from the films released a year ago. And that is why many media reports and social media users added ’12th Fail’ in the list in 2023. Whereas actually the choice was from the films of 2022.