At the Chetak Screen Awards 2026, Aditya Dhar was honored with the Best Director award for his film Dhurandhar, triumphing in a highly competitive category filled with exceptional filmmakers. This accolade highlights Dhar’s impressive artistic vision and skillful storytelling, which struck a chord with both audiences and reviewers.<\/p>\n
The Best Director category showcased a variety of talented directors, whose films spanned from blockbuster hits to critically acclaimed stories. Nominees included Laxman Ramchandra Utekar for Chhaava, Suparn S. Varma for Haq, and Neeraj Ghaywan for Homebound. Additional contenders were Raam Reddy with Jugnuma: The Fable, Mohit Suri for Saiyaara, and Reema Kagti for Superboys of Malegaon.<\/p>\n
The award was presented by Devendra Fadnavis, the Chief Minister of Maharashtra, alongside Anant Goenka, Executive Director of The Indian Express Group. Notably, Aditya Dhar was absent from the ceremony. The event featured hosts from the film industry, including Alia Bhatt, comedians Zakir Khan and Sunil Grover, as well as prominent journalist Saurabh Dwivedi, who serves as the Editor for Hindi at The Indian Express.<\/p>\n
Established by The Indian Express Group, the Chetak Screen Awards are recognized as one of India’s most prestigious film awards, founded on the belief that artistic excellence should be evaluated based on merit, integrity, and peer recognition. For the 2026 awards, the nominations and winners were selected by the Screen Academy, an independent, non-profit organization comprising 53 filmmakers, artists, and cultural professionals, which adds to the integrity of the selection process.<\/p>\n
Following an initial round of nominations, the Academy members evaluated the films using a systematic voting process. To ensure consistency in assessments, Dr. Priya Jaikumar, Chair of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts and a scholar-in-residence at the Screen Academy, implemented a comprehensive scoring system. Films were evaluated on various criteria, including creativity, technical quality, audience engagement, and innovation, while performances were judged on their authenticity. This thorough evaluation process ultimately determined the winners.<\/p>\n
The Screen Academy features prominent figures such as Shoojit Sircar, Deepa Mehta, Sriram Raghavan, Ram Madhvani, Guneet Monga Kapoor, John Abraham, Kabir Khan, Karan Johar, Mukesh Chhabra, Payal Kapadia, Prosenjit Chatterjee, RS Prasanna, Rajiv Menon, Rajkumar Hirani, Resul Pookutty, Rima Das, and Vidya Balan, among others.<\/p>\n
Fans can catch the live coverage of the Chetak Screen Awards 2026 on YouTube, Sony Entertainment Television, and Sony LIV.<\/p>\n
For more updates from the cinematic world, follow Screen Digital on YouTube.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At the Chetak Screen Awards 2026, Aditya Dhar was honored with the Best Director award for his film Dhurandhar, triumphing in a highly competitive category filled with exceptional filmmakers. This accolade highlights Dhar’s impressive artistic vision and skillful storytelling, which struck a chord with both audiences and reviewers. The Best Director category showcased a variety […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3109,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[228,87,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bollywood","category-entertainment","category-india"],"yoast_head":"\n