Salim Khan and Rani Mukerji Lead the 2025 Maharashtra State Film Awards Winners

The Maharashtra Government's Department of Tourism and Cultural Affairs has unveiled the recipients of the 2025 Maharashtra State Film Awards, with Times Now confirming that screenwriting legend Salim Khan, Bollywood stalwart Rani Mukerji, and Marathi cinema's Prasad Oak headline this year's honours. The recognition reads like a roll call of careers that have genuinely shaped how Indian cinema sounds, moves, and earns its emotional weight — and for cineastes, it is a timely reminder that the most enduring work keeps finding new reasons to be celebrated.

Four Careers, Four Languages of Cinema

What makes this year's slate quietly remarkable is the range. Salim Khan, the architect of Sholay's screenplay, receives the Raj Kapoor Jeevan Gaurav Puraskar — a fitting name given how his writing reshaped the grammar of the Hindi blockbuster. Rani Mukerji, who took the National Film Award for Best Actress for Mrs Chatterjee vs Norway, picks up the Raj Kapoor Special Contribution Award, the state acknowledging a performer whose character arcs have moved between the commercial and the deeply personal with equal conviction. Prasad Oak, one of Marathi cinema's most versatile presences, takes the Chhatrapati V. Shantaram Special Contribution Award — and his gratitude, in his own statement, leans on the lineage directly. "I grew up watching the works of V. Shantaram ji and learning from his extraordinary contribution to Indian cinema," he said. "Receiving an award in his name is truly a moment of immense pride and joy for me." Veteran composer Pt. Hridaynath Mangeshkar receives the Chitrapati V. Shantaram Jeevan Gaurav Puraskar, rounding out a list that bridges Marathi music and Mumbai's mainstream in a single breath.

What the Honours Reveal

There is a small, telling detail in Salim Khan's recognition. In 2014, he publicly declined the Padma Shri, arguing that his contribution to cinema warranted a higher civilian distinction. A state-level Jeevan Gaurav Puraskar carries, then, a particular resonance for a writer of his stature — acknowledgement without quite being the national validation he once withheld himself. Rani's trajectory, meanwhile, signals how the line between leading-lady stardom and substantive, awards-grade performance has blurred over the last decade; her Mrs Chatterjee turn was a legal drama with teeth, not a star vehicle. And Prasad's win lands on the back of his National Award for Kachcha Limboo, the directorial debut that established him as more than an actor-for-hire.

For an industry that often reads as Mumbai-centric, the presence of two Marathi-industry honourees — Oak and Mangeshkar — is worth flagging. It arrives at a moment when Maharashtra's cultural weight is drawing fresh attention in unexpected places. The same state whose cinematic output is being feted here is, increasingly, where global allocators are quietly parking money through domestic equities; global funds weary of the AI frenzy are seeking shelter in India's stock market as a volatility haven, in part because of the institutional depth the region represents. A tangential echo, perhaps, but a real one — culture and capital in Maharashtra tend to move through the same weather system.

What to Watch

The department has named the recipients, but a formal ceremony date has not been detailed in the coverage so far — worth keeping an eye on whether the event folds into Maharashtra's larger cultural calendar this quarter. For now, the slate stands as a useful corrective to awards-season thinking: not every significant Indian film recognition happens in Mumbai, and not every honoured name belongs to the Hindi mainstream alone.