The 69th National Film Awards for films that were submitted to the board in 2021, were announced on Thursday. RRR, Gangubai Kathiawadi, Pushpa: The Rise, Mimi and The Kashmir Files were some of the films that won multiple awards this year. 

While Tollywood and Bollywood bagged most of the awards, Kollywood buffs were left dejected. Manikandan's 2021 directorial Kadaisi Vivasayi won the Best Tamil Film award while the actor late Nallandi was awarded the Special Mention for his performance in the film, but a few promising movies like Jai Bhim, Sarpatta Parambarai and Karnan were neglected.

Veteran cinematographer PC Sreeram has called out the National Awards jury for not selecting Suriya's Jai Bhim. He took to his X handle (formerly called Twitter) and said, "We in the film fraternity are united in our happiness for this year's #NationalAwards. Did they leave out Jai Bhim due to any particular reason or is it the voice of INDIA which has them given jitters?"

In another tweet, he congratulated all the winners and took a jibe at Vivek Agnihotri's The Kashmir Files, which won the Best Film for National Integration. His tweet read, "Congratulations to all the #NationalFilmAwards2023 #kashmir files  for being judged  as the worst film  of the decade."