On April 27, the first ARY Film Awards ceremony was held in Karachi with great fanfare. Bilal Lashari’s box office success Waar emerged as the clear-cut winner as it won the most number of awards. The event was attended by the crème de la crème of the Pakistani film and TV fraternity. Despite a little fuss created by a known film actor on the issue of Pakistani actors performing in Indian movies and his verbal dingdong with a singer-cum-actor, the show moved along pretty well. The hiccup was brief and had the organisers in a bit of quandary. Anyway, the show went on.

There were three main categories in which awards were given: viewers’ choice, technical and jury.

In the Jury award category the best film went to Zinda Bhaag while Bilal Lashari bagged the best director trophy for his film Waar. Humayun Saeed won the best actor award for playing the lead character in Main Hoon Shahid Afridi and Amna Ilyas best actress for Zinda Bhaag.

In the Viewers’ Choice group Waar nearly swept the category as the film was declared the best of the lot, Bilal Lashari best director, Shaan best actor, Ayesha Khan best actress and star debut, Shamoon Abbasi best actor in a negative role and Meesha Shafi best supporting actor female for Waar.

Kami and Shani won the best music directors’ award for Main Hoon Shahid Afridi while Hamza Ali Abbasi won the best star debut male trophy and Ismail Tara the best performance in a comic role for the same film.

Josh got the nod for best independent movie. Rahat Fateh Ali Khan was declared the best singer for singing a song in Zinda Bhaag and the legendary Abida Parveen was the best singer female for lending her voice to a song in the movie Ishq Khuda.

In the Technical category Bilal Lashari won the award for best cinematography in Waar along with best editing. Meenu and Farjad were given the best story award for Zinda Bhaag, Pappu Samrat was declared best choreographer for Main Hoon Shahid Afridi and Usman Khalid Butt best screenplay writer for the film Siyyah.

PS: Please, calling the ARY Film Awards AFA is a bit pedestrian.