Despite the jubilant wins of varied Indian film personalities at the 69th National Film Awards, the event hasn’t been able to escape the wrath of film fanatics, many who are saddened at the seemingly politically-motivated and populist choices of winners made by the jury.

With Hindi and Telugu cinema bagging all the top honours, Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada cinema barely managed significant wins for a year that considerably saw the best works emerge from Kollywood and Mollywood, respectively.

Tamil cinema fans have been largely left disappointed with three notable mentions Jai Bhim, Sarpatta Parambarai and Karnan being largely ignored. Kadaisi Vivasayi was adjudged the Best Tamil Film with a Special Mention honour bestowed upon late actor Nallandi.

Celebrated cinematographer PC Sreeram who does not mince his words on social media, took to Twitter to express solidarity with several fans who were rooting for Suriya’s phenomenal film Jai Bhim.

The veteran lensman first congratulated all the winners and wrote in support for Jai Bhim. His tweet read, “We in the film ferernity are united in our happiness for this year’s National Awards Did they leave out “jaibeem” due to any particular reason or is it the voice if INDIA which has them given jitters.”

Subsequently, Sreeram also tweeted in contention over The Kashmir Films being award the Best Film for promoting National Integration by calling the ‘worst film.’ His tweet read, “Congratulations to all the #NationalFilmAwards2023 #kashmir files for being judged as a worst film of the decade.”

For the uninitiated, Sreeram has won the National Film Award for Best Cinematography for Mani Ratnam’s career-best film Nayagan (1987) starring Kamal Haasan.

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