National Film Award for Best Feature Film and Beary film "Byari". Most recently, the award is presented to Assamese film "Village Rockstars", produced and directed by Rima Das. Satyajit Ray is the most honoured director where six of his films"Pather Panchali" (1955), "Apur Sansar" (1959), "Charulata" (1964), "Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne" (1968), "Seemabaddha" (1971), and "Agantuk" (1991)won the award, followed Buddhadeb Dasgupta (five), Girish Kasaravalli and Mrinal Sen (four each), Shaji N. Karun (three), and Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Tapan Sinha, and G. V. Iyer (two each). , the award was presented to the films of ten debutant directors; Satyajit Ray ("Pather Panchali", 1955), Adoor Gopalakrishnan ("Swayamvaram", 1972), M.
Pather Panchali Pauline Kael wrote, "Beautiful, sometimes funny, and full of love, it brought a new vision of India to the screen". Basil Wright considered it "a new and incontrovertible work of art". James Berardinelli wrote in 1996 that the film "touches the souls and minds of viewers, transcending cultural and linguistic barriers". In 2006 Philip French of "The Observer" called it "one of the greatest pictures ever made". Twenty years after the release of "Pather Panchali", Akira Kurosawa summarised the effect of the film as overwhelming and lauded its ability "to stir up deep passions". The reaction was not uniformly positive.