Pune: Marathi movies’ excellence was evident at the National Film Awards 2026 as ‘Swargandharva Sudhir Phadke’ bagged the national award for best screenplay (adapted), while Marathi-English film ‘Bhangaar’ was named the best non-feature film on Saturday.The film ‘Hamsafar’ won the award for the best short film. The best music direction award in the non-feature section went to the Marathi documentary ‘Parat 41° Chya Magavar (On the Trail of 41°)’. Composer Shivpal Singh Kang received the honour for creating the film’s musical score.Abhay Jodhpurkar bagged the national award for the best male playback singer for the song “Navasachi Gauri Mazi” in the film ‘Gharat Ganpati’. In the regional language category, a popular drama-turned-movie, ‘Mukkam Post Bombilwadi’, won the best Marathi film award at the 72nd National Film Awards (2026).The movie ‘Swargandharva Sudhir Phadke’ is a biopic on the life of the late veteran singer and musician Sudhir Phadke. He gifted the timeless classic “Geet Ramayan” (a landmark collection of 56 Marathi songs chronologically telling the story of Ramayana).“The biggest challenge while writing the screenplay was to ensure that this film did not remain just a conventional biopic, but became a cinematic experience that stays in the audience’s hearts forever. We worked with great attention to detail on every character, the meaning behind every scene, the casting, the arrangement of music, dialogues, drama and visual design,” said Yogesh Deshpande, the writer of the movie.Abhijeet Dalvi’s ‘Hamsafar’ explores the concept of a companion. The film, through a compassionate cinematic narrative, reveals how ordinary objects become deeply personal and how their loss opens a poignant void, sparking a heartfelt search for memory, identity and emotional connection.Adapted from a hit play by Paresh Mokashi, the film ‘Mukkam Post Bombilwadi’ is an absurd historical farce set in 1942 during the World War II. The story connects three distinct locations: Adolf Hitler’s office in Germany, Winston Churchill’s war room in London and the quiet village of Bombilwadi in Konkan.When Hitler decides to personally fly to Japan to secure a war-winning innovation, the British catch wind of it. Hitler ends up crash-landing in Bombilwadi, a village already chaotic with freedom fighters plotting against the British and a local British officer distracted by rehearsing Shakespeare’s plays.
