'Vicky Kaushal deserved Best Actor award for Sardar Udham'

Shoojit Sircar’s ‘Sardar Udham’, which starred Vicky Kaushal in the lead, scooped five awards at the recently announced 69th National Film Awards. In a new interview with a leading media house, the filmmaker spoke about Vicky not winning the ‘Best Actor’ honour and said that he ‘undoubtedly deserved’ it. The ‘Best Actor’ award went to Allu Arjun for his performance in ‘Pushpa: The Rise’.

In the interview, Shoojit said, “Vicky undoubtedly deserved the ‘Best Actor’ award. The way he transformed into Sardar Udham is commendable. We started with the Jallianwala Bagh sequence. The first shot was of Udham picking up the dead bodies and feeling their weight and pain. The set was witnessing that nightmare. That set the tone of the film. Vicky couldn’t sleep for nights and carried that disturbance throughout other parts of the movie.”

At the 69th National Film Awards, ‘Sardar Udham’ was named the ‘Best Hindi Film’. It also won awards in ‘Best Cinematography’, ‘Best Costume Designer’, ‘Best Production Design’ and ‘Best Audiography: Re-Recording (Final Mixing)’ categories.

In an earlier interview with another leading media house right after the awards were announced, Shoojit had said that all the awards that ‘Sardar Udham’ has won are dedicated to Irrfan Khan.

“All the awards that we have won for the film are shared by the team. We, as a team, from producer Ronnie Lahiri to actor Vicky Kaushal, have decided to dedicate this award to Irrfan Khan,” he said.

Irrfan was the initial choice for the film, but the actor died in 2020.