Yami Gautam Wins Her First National Award, and Article 370 Sweeps the 72nd National Film Awards

Yami Gautam has won her first National Film Award, taking Best Actress for playing intelligence officer Zooni Haksar in Article 370, fourteen years into her career. The film, a political thriller centred on the 2019 abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir, was also named Best Feature Film at the 72nd National Film Awards, announced in New Delhi.

The win carries extra weight for her because Article 370 was produced under Jio Studios and B62 Studios with backing from Jyoti Deshpande, Aditya Dhar and Lokesh Dhar, and she has described it as a deeply personal home production rather than an outside job. Shashwat Sachdev also won Best Music Director for the film's score.

The wider list reads like a genuine cross-section of the year's Indian cinema rather than a Hindi-only affair. Mammootty and Kartik Aaryan shared Best Actor, for Bramayugam and Chandu Champion respectively. Rajkumar Periasamy won Best Director for the Tamil blockbuster Amaran. An eleven-member jury chaired by Malayalam filmmaker Jayaraj reviewed 161 films across 24 languages to reach the list.

For an actor whose career has run mostly through commercial thrillers and comedies, a Best Actress National Award on a home-produced political drama is the kind of credibility marker that reshapes how a studio pitches her next role.