Santha Shishunala Sharifa

Santha Shishunala Sharifa (Kannada: ಸಂತ ಶಿಶುನಾಳ ಶರೀಫ) is a 1990 Indian Kannada biographical drama film directed and co-written by T. S. Nagabharana and produced by Srihari Khoday and Mahima Patel for Yajaman Enterprises. The story is based on the life of acclaimed saint poet Shishunala Sharif who wrote several moral poems striving towards social reformation. A collection of Sharif's poems are set to tunes by C. Ashwath, who also did the major playback singing. The soundtrack consisting of 16 poems was extremely popular upon release. The dialogues for this movie was wrtitten by Gopala Wajapayi, a well known theatre figure and translator of Bertolt Brecht's play The Caucasian Chalk Circle.

The film's cast comprised Sridhar in the titular role along with Girish Karnad, Suman Ranganathan and H. G. Dattatreya among others.

The film was widely appreciated by critics and audience upon release. It went on to win Nargis Dutt Award for Best Feature Film on National Integration. The film also received multiple Karnataka State Film Awards including Best Film, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor categories.

The music of the film was composed by C. Ashwath. All the 16 songs composed for this film have been from the literary work collection of poet Shishunala Sharif. The songs are rendered by popular Sugama Sangeetha singers with most of them sung by C. Ashwath himself.

The film has won the following awards since its release.

1990 National Film Awards (India)