3rd National Film Awards Film in a particular language. Certificate of Merit in all the categories is discontinued over the years. Feature films were awarded at All India as well as regional level. For 3rd National Film Awards, "Pather Panchali", a Bengali film by a debutant director Satyajit Ray won the President's Gold Medal for the All India Best Feature Film. Following were the awards given: For 3rd National Film Awards, none of the films were awarded from Children's films category as no film was found to be suitable. With 3rd National Film Awards, new award category was introduced for the feature films made
Pather Panchali and their fate, as signifying a philosophical core: that both the young and the old die. Seton writes of the film's "lyrical" qualities, noting especially the imagery immediately before the onset of monsoon. Robinson writes about a peculiar quality of "lyrical happiness" in the film, and states that "Pather Panchali" is "about unsophisticated people shot through with great sophistication, and without a trace of condescension or inflated sentiment". Darius Cooper discusses the use of different "rasa" in the film, observing Apu's repeated "epiphany of wonder", brought about not only by what the boy sees around him, but also when he