MUMBAI: The IIFA Utsavam Awards 2016, which celebrates South Indian cinema, saw the coming together of the stars from the Tamil and Malayalam Film Industries on 24 January.

The first day saw the Tamil and Malayalam film industries being felicitated. In the Tamil Film Awards, Baahubali-The Beginning took home the highest number of accolades with a total tally of six awards including Best Picture, Direction, Supporting Role (Male), Supporting Role (Female), Playback Singer (Male) and Playback Singer (Female).

For the Malyalam Film Awards, Ennu Ninte Moideen also took home the highest number of awards with a total tally of six awards including Best Picture, Leading Role (Male), Leading Role (Female), Supporting Role (Female) and Playback Singer (Female).

Jayam Ravi won the award for Leading Role (Male) for his performance in Thani Oruvan (Tamil), while Nayanthara walked away with the award for Leading Role (Female) for May (Tamil). Prithviraj Sukumaran and Parvathi Menon won Best Actor and Best Actress for their film Ennu Ninte Moideen.

The evening also saw performances by Kavya Madhavan, Shriya Saran, Adah Sharma, Tapsee Pannu, Mamta Mohandas, Nikki Galrani and Bharath.

The awards will be telecast on Sun TV.

Sun TV Network network programming head S.J. Clement said, “Sun TV Network is proud to be associated with the premiere edition of IIFA Utsavam 2015, a pioneering event that will present the finest among the South Indian film fraternity. Sun TV Network reaches around 58 million households in the country. Increasingly, our programming is being accessed by the South Indian diaspora across the globe. We believe in delivering consistently high quality entertainment through our unrelenting focus on premium content. Our collaboration with IIFA reiterates our commitment to be at the leading edge of broadcast media industry.”

Wizcraft International Entertainment director Andre Timmins said, “We are thrilled at the phenomenal success of the very first edition of IIFA Utsavam. There have been a lot of challenged we have had to overcome including the tragedy in Chennai. We are honoured to be able to help the city of Chennai get back on its feet through IIFA Utsavam. It is an honour to felicitate so many deserving individuals on their talent and hard work in the year gone by and we wish all the winners tonight the very best.”