Bollywood’s popular award shows have already been surrounded by a lot of questions. One such popular award show is once again in discussion among the film fans. Alia Bhatt was once again chosen the Best Actress at the Filmfare Awards 2025. Alia, who had won this award in 2023 and 2024, completed a hat-trick by lifting the Filmfare trophy for the third consecutive time.
Alia Bhatt is one of the most powerful actresses of Bollywood, there has never been any doubt about it. But this time Bollywood fans are not able to digest his award. And the reason for this is the category in which Alia has received the award. After Alia received the award, many social media users said that the lead actress of ‘Article 370’ deserves this award. Yami Gautam The name should have been chosen. If we talk about the category of award shows, then this point also seems to have merit.
Yami’s film was more ‘popular’ than Alia’s
Questions have always been raised regarding the jury and selection of winners in popular award shows. But by keeping the big awards in two categories, these award shows have found a way to satisfy the film fans to some extent. For example, in the big awards of Filmfare, there are two categories – Popular and Critics’ Choice. This time Alia has received the Best Actress Award in the ‘Popular’ category at Filmfare. Whereas the ‘Critics’ Choice’ Best Actress Award was given to Pratibha Ranta for ‘Lapata Ladies’.
The biggest problem with Alia’s award is that the film ‘Jigra’ for which she received this award, cannot be called ‘popular’. The budget of this film, released last year, was reported to be around Rs 80 crore, without the publicity expenses. But according to Sacknilk, this film was able to collect only about Rs 32 crore at the box office. This film was one of the biggest flops of the year.
See the names and films of the actresses who got nomination in this category along with Alia – Kareena Kapoor (Crew), Kriti Sanon (Teri Baton Mein Aisa Uljha Jiya), Shraddha Kapoor (Stree 2), Tabu (Crew) and Yami Gautam (Article 370). That is, among the films for which all these actresses got nominations, except Alia’s ‘Jigra’, all the rest were big hits, whose earnings are proof of their popularity.
Among the films for which these actresses got nominations, ‘Crew’ was a film which had three lead actresses – Kareena, Tabu and Kriti. While ‘Teri Baton Mein Aisa Uljha Jiya’ and ‘Stree 2’ were successful at the box office, they cannot be called films that worked entirely on the strength of these actresses. In comparison to these, Yami Gautam’s work in ‘Article 370’ becomes much bigger. This film was on a real life serious political topic. Yami played the lead role of an NIA officer in this and was the ‘star’ of the film.
Those who watched ‘Article 370’ know how powerful Yami’s performance was in this film. Like any male star film, Yami holds the full attention of the audience in this film. That too in a role which is completely non-glamorous, far away from the lead actress formula of Bollywood. In the film, he not only did explosive action but his emotions were also absolutely spot on in many scenes.
The treatment of the film was in thriller style, which Yami handled well and delivered a performance that collected more than Rs 110 crore gross in a budget of Rs 20 crore. But still his ‘popular’ performance was not considered worthy of an award by the Filmfare jury.
Whereas for ‘Jigra’ which did not live up to the standards of ‘popular’, Alia got the nomination of ‘Best Actress’ in the popular category and she also won. If an actor’s performance in a flop film is strong, then the ‘Critic’s Choice’ category is perfect for him. Therefore the question arises that why Alia was not nominated in this category?
Was Yami not given the award because of politics?
Due to Yami Gautam not being selected as the Best Actress, many people on social media are calling it Filmfare’s favouriteism. But apart from this, perhaps there is another big reason which came between Yami and this award – the political content of the film.
‘Article 370’ was based on a big and serious issue related to the country’s politics. Just like ‘The Kashmir Files’ which came in 2022. Director Vivek Agnihotri’s film was also in controversies due to its political content. But being the third biggest film of that year showed that this film was also quite popular. After all, without becoming popular, no film can make a gross collection of more than Rs 300 crore. of 2023 filmfare awardWhen the nominations for films came out in 2017, ‘The Kashmir Files’ was nominated in many major categories.
Anupam Kher got nomination for Best Actor and Vivek Agnihotri got nomination for Best Director. But ‘The Kashmir Files’ did not receive a single Filmfare Award in Filmfare 2023. Whereas in the Best Actor category that year, Hrithik Roshan’s name was also there along with Anupam Kher, who got nomination for ‘Vikram Vedha’ which proved to be weak at the box office. Whereas the award in this category was won by Rajkumar Rao whose film ‘Badhaai Do’ was a flop at the box office.
It is not that Rajkumar Rao’s performance was weak but it was definitely not the ‘popular’ performance of this year. He could also have been nominated in ‘Critic’s Choice’. But what happened with Anupam Kher of ‘The Kashmir Files’ and Yami Gautam of ‘Article 370’ certainly raises the question whether Bollywood award shows want to run away from political content?
The answers to these questions lie only with the Filmfare jury, which may not consider it necessary to say anything. But as a film industry, it is very important for Bollywood to understand that if they keep doing this with the films and actors liked by the public, it will harm their own image, which anyway is being constantly examined through the lens since the lockdown.
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