NEW DELHI: A festival of films that won awards at the 61st National Film awards for 2013 has commenced in the capital with the screening of Marathi feature film Astu by Sumitra Bhave and Sunil Sukhtankar and short film Chidiya Udh by Pranjal Dua.

 
Organised by the Directorate of Film Festivals at the Sirifort Complex, it will feature all the National Award winning films for the public during the four-day festival.

 
Thus, it will screen 30 feature films and 23 non-feature films.
 

The inauguration was attended by filmmakers Sumitra Bhave and Sunil Sukthankar among others.
 

Entry to the screenings is free and on first come first serve basis.
 

Some of the other films to be screened at the festival are Ship of Theseus, Miss Lovely, Shahid, Crossing Bridges, Fandry, Liar’s Dice and The Coffin maker.

 
A total of 41 awards are to be given by the President in the non-feature film category while the number of awards in feature film category is 40.

 
Hindi films once again dominated the National Film Awards by getting as many as fifteen awards among feature films. Marathi came next with ten awards followed by Bengali with six and Tamil and Kannada with five each and Malayalam with four.

 
However, the highest number of awards went to the Bengali film ‘Jaatishwar’ which won awards for best female playback for Rupankar and the film ‘e tumi kemon tumi’, best costume for Sabarni Das, best make-up for Vilram Gaikwad (for hero Prosenjit) and Kabir Suman for best musical score.

 
‘Bhag Milkha Bhag’ by Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra bagged the award for the most popular film providing wholesome entertainment. ‘Fandry’ got the Indira Gandhi Award fir best directorial debut by Nagraj Manjule, the Nargis Dutt award for national integration for Balu Mahendra’s tamil film ‘Thalaimuraigal’ and the social issues award went to the Marathi ‘Tuhya Dharma Koncha’ by Satish Manwar.