“Akshay Kumar Got The National Award For Rustom & Airlift,” Says Jury Head Priyadarshan

Akshay Kumar whom the popular awards have eluded for years , is now the proud recipient of  the National award for two of his back-to-back performances in 2016 in Airlift and Rustom

Strangely  the list of winner declares only Akshay as the winner of Rustom only.

This left a lot of Akshay’s friends and collaborators confused.

Raja Krishna Menon who has directed Akshay in Airlift said, “I thought he won for Rustom. If he has won forAirlift as well, then I am over the moon. Akshay definitely deserves the award. He’s worked hard all these years and delivered some really great performances and I believe in Airlift he really pushed the boundaries to reach  a place that very actors reach.”

The National award jury’s helmer Priyadarshan makes it clear that Akshay has been awarded for the two films.

“Akshay has won the Best Actor award for both Airlift and Rustom…For technical reasons only Rustom is mentioned in the list of awardees. But he has given contrasting and extremely sensitive  performances in bothAirlift and Rustom, and we thought it was  only fair to honour him  for both,” says  filmmaker Priyadarshan, a long term admirer  of Akshay’s work—they’ve collaborated on many comedies from Hera Pheri  to KhattaMeetha.

Priyan says he was very impressed by the films in two languages this year. “The Bengali and Marathi films submitted to us were truly outstanding. I’d say these two regions led the awards race. There was unanimity about giving the best feature film award to the Marathi film Kaasav and the best director to Rajesh Mapusker for the Marathi film Ventilator.The Marathi and Bengali films were ahead of all the other languages. The only competition they had came from  Malayalam cinema,” says Priyan whose very close collaborator and friendMohanlal won the Special Jury Award for Pulimurugan, Janatha Garage and Munthirivallikal Thalirkkumbol.”