Vasanthabalan's 'matter-of-fact' movie ‘Veyyil’ has won the 54th National Film Awards in the Best Tamil Film category for the year 2006.

This highly appreciated film follows the life of a naughty young boy with a reclusive lifestyle. Playing hooky to school and watching movies all the time, the boy is cornered and humiliated by his father in front of the entire village. Ashamed and angry, the boy steals money from his father and runs away to Chennai.

He then ekes out a living after joining a cinema theater as a help. As he grows up, harsh realities of an cruel world hit him hard….he ends up losing the girl he loved….loses his job as the theater's film operator (a metaphorical representation of conventional cinema theaters getting extinct because of piracy, television serials and corporate run multiplexes) because the theater was running at a loss.

Knowing no other world, the boy who ran away returns as a man (played by Pasupathi) back to his childhood home and comes to terms with a plethora of emotions that bring him to tears.

The director needs to be lauded for the matter-of-fact way of narration charged with high voltage emotional involvements. His younger brother on the other hand grows up as the model boy of the village, running his own business and fights for his elder brother's acceptance in the family.

The movie was earlier selected for screening at the prestigious Cannes film festival.

Past mistakes brand a man and the character played by Pasupathi stands testimony to that.

Produced by director Shankar, the movie came across as a gripping tale and thoroughly deserves the National Award it has won.

Indiaglitz congratulates the ‘Veyyil’ team for this well deserved award.