18th National Film Awards

The 18th National Film Awards were held in Chennai, India in November 1971 by the Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting for Indian films released in 1970. The awards were presented by then President of India, V. V. Giri.

Juries

The award winners were chosen by four juries, one each for the Bombay, Calcutta and Madras regions and a central jury for all India. For the 18th National Film Awards the central jury was headed by Justice G. D. Khosla.

Jury Members: Central
- G. D. Khosla (Chair) • Shiela Vats • Teji Bachchan • V. K. Narayana Menon • Ashis Burman • Ali Sardar Jafri • Ammu Swaminathan • Din Dayal • Nasir Hussain • U. Visweswar Rao • Subodh Mitra
Regional Jury: Bombay
- Vijay Tendulkar (Chair) • Firoze Rangoonwalla • Bikram Singh • K. K. Hebbar • Irene Heredia • Ismat Chughtai • L. G. Jog • Gopinath Talwalkar • Devendra Goel • Shatrujit Paul • Bhappi Sonie
Regional Jury: Calcutta
- Amala Shankar (Chair) • Amina Kar • Anant Mahapatra • A. K. Pramanick • Tarun Roy • Pankaj Mullick • Rajendra Nath Barua • Shibatosh Mukerjee • Narayan Chakraborty • Dilip Sarkar • Nirmal Chowdhury
Regional Jury: Madras
- C. R. Pattabhiraman (Chair) • K. Venkataswamy Naidu • P. P. Naidu • Mallikarjuna Rao • Shakuntala Hegde • D. Ramanaidu • Vijayalakshmi • V. C. Subburaman • Kambisseri Karunakaran • C. N. Ramanujam • T. S. Muthuswamy • K. Kottarakkara

Awards

Awards were given to feature films and non-feature films.

The top national award in each category was the President's Gold Medal and, at the regional level, the President's Silver Medal.

Lifetime Achievement Award

Feature films

The Kannada film Samskara won the President's Gold Medal for the All India Best Feature Film. Three award each went to the Hindi films, Dastak and Mera Naam Joker, and to the Bengali film Pratidwandi.

All India Award

Award recipients:

Regional Award

The awards were given to the best films made in the regional languages of India. For feature films in Assamese, English, Gujarati, Kashmiri, Oriya and Punjabi language, the resident's Silver Medal for Best Feature Film was not given. The producer and director of the film were awarded with ₹5,000 and a Silver medal, respectively.