| National Film Award for Best Sound Design | |
|---|---|
| National award for contributions to Indian Cinema | |
| Sponsored by | National Film Development Corporation of India |
| Formerly called | Best Sound Recording (1976–1979) Best Audiography (1980–2021) |
| Reward(s) |
|
| First awarded | 1976 |
| Last awarded | 2022 |
| Most recent winner | Anand Krishnamoorthi |
| Highlights | |
| Total awarded | 45 (till 2008) 10 (Location sound recordist) 12 (Sound designer) 15 (Re-recordist of the final mixed track) 1 (since 2022) |
| First winner | S. P. Ramanathan |
The National Film Award for Best Sound Design is one of the National Film Awards presented annually by the National Film Development Corporation of India. It is one of several awards presented for feature films and awarded with Rajat Kamal (Silver Lotus).
The award was instituted in 1976, at 24th National Film Awards and awarded annually for films produced in the year across the country, in all Indian languages; Hindi (30 awards), Malayalam (15 awards), Bengali (10 awards), Tamil (9 awards), Marathi (5 awards), Telugu, Ladakhi (two each), and Assamese, Sanskrit (one Each).
Since the 57th National Film Awards the award has been sub-categorised into Location sound recordist, Sound designer and Re-recordist of the final mixed track. At the 70th National Film Awards, the award was renamed to Best Sound Design. Two sub-categories Location Sound Recordist and Re-recordist of the Final Mixed Track were discontinued, with only sound designer being eligible to the award.[1][2] The decision to discontinue the two other sub-categories received some criticism.[3]