Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Black has swept the major honours at the International Indian Film Academy awards at Dubai's Airport Expo Centre, including the best film, actor, actress and director trophies.
The film, which also hogged the limelight at the Filmfare Awards earlier this year, bagged a total of five trophies in the popular awards category on Friday night. A poignant portrayal of the struggle of a deaf-mute girl to live up to the expectations of her mentor, it had been the overwhelming favourite for the top awards in the seventh edition of the annual extravaganza.
Amitabh Bachchan and Rani Mukherjee picked up the Best Actor and Best Actress awards while Bhansali's victory in the Best Director category made it a clean sweep for Black. Child actor Ayesha Kapoor won the Best Supporting Actress trophy for playing the young deaf-mute girl in Bhansali's epic while Abhishek Bachchan picked up the Best Supporting Actor award for his understated performance in Ram Gopal Varma's Sarkar.
The Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy trio bagged honours for their spell-binding music in Bunty aur Babli. The Kajra Re number from the film, which became a rage, won two awards - the Best Playback Singer (Female) for Alisha Chinai and Best Lyricist for Gulzar.
Composer-turned-crooner Himesh Reshammiya took home the Best Playback Singer (Male) trophy for chartbuster Aashiq Banaya Aapne from the movie of the same name.
Javed Jaffery held off strong competition from Akshay Kumar (Garam Masala) and Riteish Deshmukh (Bluffmaster) to bag the Best Actor in a Comic Role trophy for his popular 'Eggactly' sequences in Salaam Namaste.
There were no surprises when Vidya Balan (Parineeta) and Shiney Ahuja (Hazaaron Khwahishen Aisi), who had won several Best Debut awards earlier this year, took home the trophies again at IIFA.
Bollywood baddie Nana Patekar proved he's still the Best Villain around with a trophy for his negative role in Apaharan.
Filmmaker Nagesh Kukunoor picked up the Best Story award for Iqbal - a sensitive portrayal of a deaf-mute villager's quest to make it big in cricket.
Yesteryear actress Asha Parekh and filmmaker O P Dutta were honoured with Lifetime Achievement Awards. Hollywood producer Ashok Amritraj was specially honoured for his contribution in promoting Indian cinema overseas.
Among the highlights of the star-studded evening were live performances by several Bollywood stars. While Preity Zinta danced to the strains of Mehboob Mere and Laila Main Laila, Hrithik Roshan won applause for his gyrations to the music of his upcoming film Krissh.
In the technical awards announced earlier, Black won awards for Best cinematography, editing, song recording and background score while Pradeep Sarkar's Parineeta was honoured for make-up and costume, sound recording, art direction and screenplay.
The Best Choreography award went to Vaibhavi Merchant for Kajra Re - the third IIFA award for the song. The action- thriller Dus lived up to expectations by garnering Allan Amin the Best Action award.
