Rishab Shetty's 1st Reaction After Winning Maiden National Award For Best Actor: I'm Just A Face

Rishab Shetty National Award Win: Actor Rishab Shetty clinched the Best Actor award for his blockbuster film Kantara at the 70th National Film Awards, whose winners were announced in the national capital on Friday. Nithya Menen and Manasi Parekh shared the Best Actress honour. While Nithya bagged the honour for her role in the Tamil film Thiruchitrambalam, Manasi won the award for the Gujarati film Kutch Express. The awards honouring the best films and cinematic achievements of the year 2022, were announced by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B) at a press conference. The actor has now reacted to his big win.  

Rishab Shetty says he was neither expecting, nor excited about winning the award

Actor-director Rishab Shetty, spoke to PTI on the sidelines of a press conference organised for winning the Best Actor Award for his portrayal in the Kannada film Kantara. Incidentally, Kantara also won the Best Popular Film Providing Wholesome Entertainment Award.

Shetty said he was neither expecting to win the award nor excited about winning it. "I just do my work, but Kantara’s win should go to every team member involved in it. I am just a face of it, but there were a lot of technicians who gave their best for the film. I want to thank the people on their behalf," he added. Shetty also thanked the Kannada audience. "They are the ones who took the film to the pan-India platform," he said.

Rishab Shetty says he will stop making ‘festival-type’ films

Rishab Shetty, who won the Best Actor Award at the 70th National Film Awards, on Friday said that he will not make "festival-type" films anymore. "We premiere at festivals and win awards, but we do not get any platform for that. OTT platforms do not buy Kannada content, so we are forced to put it on YouTube channels. I am done with that. We don’t get any recovery from such films," said Shetty.

Shetty said he has done three such festival films so far. "A couple more are in the pipeline – ‘Pedro’ and ‘Vagachipani’. I produced these films because they gave me everything. I wanted to give something back to it. I think I am going to see how it goes in the future," he added. The Kannada film industry is one of the big winners this time. Apart from Best Actor and Best Popular Film, it also won the awards for Best Action Choreography , Best Debut Director Basti Dinesh Shenoy for Madhyanthara, Best Editing for Suresh Urs for Madhyanthara and Best Arts Culture Film for Kannada documentary film Ranga Vibhoga by Suneel Puranik.