National Film Award for Best Film Critic

The National Film Award for Best Film Critic is one of the National Film Awards presented annually by the Directorate of Film Festivals, the organisation set up by Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, India. It is one of several awards presented for feature films and awarded with Swarna Kamal (Golden Lotus).

National Film Award for Best Film Critic
National award for contributions to writing about Indian Cinema
Sponsored by	Directorate of Film Festivals
Reward(s)	Swarna Kamal (Golden Lotus) ₹1,00,000
First award	1984
Final award	2023
Most recent winner	Utpal Datta
Highlights
Total awarded	40
First winner	Swapan Mallick

The award was instituted in 1984, at 32nd National Film Awards and awarded annually for films produced in the year across the country, in all Indian languages.

Winners

Award includes 'Swarna Kamal' (Golden Lotus) and cash prize. Following are the award winners over the years:

Awards legends
	Indicates a joint award for the year

List of award recipients, showing the year and language(s)
Year	Recipient(s)	Language(s)	Refs.
1984 (32nd)	Swapan Mallick	English	[1]
1985 (33rd)	No Award		[2]
1986 (34th)	Chidananda Dasgupta	Bengali	[3]
1987 (35th)	Brajeshwar Madan	Hindi	[4]
1988 (36th)	Manmohan Chadha	Hindi	[5]
1989 (37th)	K. N. T. Sastry	Telugu	[6]
1990 (38th)	Shoma A. Chatterjee	Bengali	[7]
1991 (39th)	Gautam Kaul	English	[8]
1992 (40th)	Sudhir Bose	Bengali	[9]
1993 (41st)	Pritiman Sarkar	Bengali	[10]
1994 (42nd)	Rashmi Doraiswamy	English	[11]
1995 (43rd)	M. C. Raja Narayanan	• English  • Malayalam	[12]
1996 (44th)	M. K. Raghavendra	English	[13]
1997 (45th)	Deepa Gahlot	English	[14]
1998 (46th)	Meenakshi Shedde	English	[15]
1999 (47th)	I. Shanmughadas	Malayalam	[16]
2000 (48th)	Vasiraju Prakasam	Telugu	[17]
	Suresh Sharma	Hindi
2001 (49th)	Vinod Anupam	Hindi	[18]
2002 (50th)	Utpal Borpujari	English	[19]
2003 (51st)	Saibal Chatterjee	English	[20]
2004 (52nd)	Namrata Joshi	English	[21]
2005 (53rd)	Baradwaj Rangan	English	[22]
2006 (54th)	G. P. Ramachandran	Malayalam	[23]
	Rafique A. R. Baghdadi	English
2007 (55th)	V. K. Joseph	Malayalam	[24]
2008 (56th)	Altaf Mazid	• English  • Assamese	[25]
	R. K. Bidur Singh	Meitei
2009 (57th)	C. S. Venkiteswaran	Malayalam	[26]
2010 (58th)	Joshy Joseph	English	[27]
	N. Manu Chakravarthy	• Kannada  • English
2011 (59th)	Manoj Barpujari	• Assamese  • English	[28]
2012 (60th)	P. S. Radhakrishnan	Malayalam	[29]
2013 (61st)	Alaka Sahani	English	[30]
2014 (62nd)	Tanul Thakur	English	[31]
2015 (63rd)	Meghachandra Kongbam	Meitei	[32]
2016 (64th)	G. Dhananjayan	Tamil	[33]
2017 (65th)	Giridhar Jha	English
2018 (66th)	Blais Johny	Malayalam
	Anant Vijay	Hindi
2019 (67th)	Sohini Chattopadhyay	English	[34]
2020 (68th)	No Award		[35]
2021 (69th)	Purushothama Charyulu	Telugu	[36]
2022 (70th)	Deepak Dua	Hindi	[37]
2023 (71st)	Utpal Datta	Assamese	[38]