Mammootty on His Fourth National Award for Bramayugam

Mammootty won his fourth National Film Award for Best Actor for Bramayugam, sharing the 72nd honour with Kartik Aaryan for Chandu Champion. At the awards ceremony in Kevadia, Gujarat, on Sept. 22, he spoke about how he built the role of Kodumon Potti, and credited the team behind a film shot entirely in black and white.

The award

The Press Information Bureau's list of the 72nd National Film Awards, which cover 2024 films, names Mammootty for Bramayugam and Kartik Aaryan for Chandu Champion as joint winners of the Best Actor award. The prize is a Rajat Kamal and Rs 2 lakh, shared between the two. The Hindu reported the awards were announced on July 18, 2026, and Wikipedia says the winners were felicitated by President Droupadi Murmu on Sept. 22.

Bramayugam also won the Best Cinematography award for Shehnad Jalal, according to the same list.

What Mammootty said

Onmanorama reported his remarks at the ceremony. He said national recognition is a source of motivation for any artiste, and that he does not rely on extensive preparation before stepping on a set. In his words, "When choosing a film, I first look at the screenplay, followed by the depth of the character. I don't have a habit of doing extensive preparation beforehand. But when I stand in front of the camera on the first day of filming, some kind of energy fills me. I still don't know what that magic is."

He said the final version of Kodumon Potti was very different from the initial character outline presented to him. According to Onmanorama, he said that after about half an hour with his makeup artist and costume designer he was able to transform into the character. He credited the director, the makeup artist, the costume designer and especially the cinematographer, who created the visual language for the character.

He also said Bramayugam was perhaps the first full-fledged black-and-white experiment of his career, and that apart from a small guest appearance in a black-and-white film in the past he had not done one before. He described the award as a blessing he embraces with humility, and thanked directors, writers, co-stars, producers and audiences. Times of India's headline says he hopes to entertain audiences more, more and more times.

The film

Wikipedia describes Bramayugam as a 2024 Malayalam period folk horror film written and directed by Rahul Sadasivan and produced by YNOT Studios and Night Shift Studios. It stars Mammootty, Arjun Ashokan and Sidharth Bharathan, and it released on Feb. 15, 2024. The entry says it was a box office success and one of the highest-grossing Malayalam films of 2024, and that Mammootty also won the Kerala State Film Award for Best Actor for it. It adds that the film was selected for a special screening at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles on Feb. 12, 2026.

The career

Wikipedia lists a career of more than 400 films, mostly in Malayalam, with work in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Hindi and English. It credits him with four National Film Awards, eleven Kerala State Film Awards and fifteen Filmfare Awards South. It says he received the Padma Bhushan in 2026, after the Padma Shri in 1998. He made his screen debut as a junior artiste in Anubhavangal Paalichakal in 1971, and his first credited role came in M. T. Vasudevan Nair's Vilkkanundu Swapnangal in 1980.

Why it matters

Mammootty has said Bramayugam was his first full black-and-white experiment, so an acting award for it is a notable outcome. The Hindu's report on the ceremony, listed in Wikipedia's citations, carries the headline that Mammootty, Kartik Aaryan and Yami Gautam received the acting awards.

What we could not confirm

We read Onmanorama in full. The Times of India and ETV Bharat pieces we saw through search summaries. We could not confirm how many National Awards Kartik Aaryan has won, because that is outside this story. Wikipedia's career counts are approximate, and we have not checked them against the filmography. We have not seen the film.

Sources

*Cover photo: Azeezrealview, Wikimedia Commons, *[*https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mammootty_Star.jpg*](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mammootty_Star.jpg)* (CC BY-SA 4.0).*