Nitesh Tiwari was shooting for a commercial and it was pretty late that he came to know that his last film ‘Chhichhore’ had won the National Award for the Best Film in the Hindi Film category, which was announced this evening. “It was only when my wife (Ashwiny Iyer) told me on the set that I came to know. It had happened at least an hour before that and we didn’t know as our shoot was going on.”

Reveals Tiwari, “The first call I made was to the film’s producer Sajid Nadiadwala. He was elated. You can understand the feeling when one’s work gets this kind of recognition. We are very grateful to the jury. Seriously, it hadn’t even crossed my mind that ‘Chhichhore’ would be under consideration for a National Award.

Nadiadwala sent us a text through his spokesperson, which read as follows: “On behalf of NGE, I dedicate this extremely prestigious award to Sushant Singh Rajput. We can’t get over his loss ever but I sincerely pray that this award gives a little bit of happiness to his family and fans which includes me. And I am tremendously grateful to Nitesh Tiwari for giving us all this very special movie.”

Tiwari said that he was very sure that he wanted only Shraddha Kapoor and Sushant in lead roles for this movie. “Very little work of any artiste requires to be seen for a right director to get the right gut and instinct if a particular actor would be able to pull off a certain role or not. There is joy but there is sadness too; it’s a mixed feeling as Sushant is not here with us anymore to share this moment,” and added, “I must thank my entire team effort as everyone did perfectly whatever they were assigned.”

‘Chhichhore’ which released in September 2019 also starred Varun Sharma, Tahir Raj Bhasin and Prateik Babbar among others in pivotal roles.

Interestingly, it’s a double celebration for Tiwari as his wife’s film ‘Panga’ actress Kangana Ranaut has also won a National Award for ‘Manikarnika’ and ‘Panga’ both.