Kaaka Muttai (2014)

Original title

காக்கா முட்டை

Directed by

M. Manikandan

Genre

comedy film

Country

India

Runtime

1h 31m

Rated

G

Rating

7.8 of 10 from 63 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

Two young brothers living in a Chennai slum become obsessed with trying a pizza from a local restaurant. Their simple desire drives them on a small adventure through their city.

lightheartedheartfeltgentleearthyhopefulinnocentobservationalwarm

What happens

Kaaka Muttai is a 2015 Indian Tamil-language comedy drama film written, directed and filmed by M. Manikandan, in his directorial debut. Jointly produced by Dhanush's Wunderbar Films, Vetrimaaran's Grass Root Film Company and distributed by Fox Star Studios, it stars newcomers J. Vignesh and V. Ramesh in the title roles, alongside Aishwarya Rajesh, Ramesh Thilak, Yogi Babu in supporting roles and Silambarasan in a cameo appearance. The film's storyline revolves around two slum children in Chennai, whose desire is to taste a pizza at local restaurant, Pizza Spot. Vetrimaaran approached Manikandan in a film festival, after he saw one of his short films being screened. When asked by Vetrimaaran to develop a script, Manikandan wrote a storyline based on slum children and also inspired incidents from his life. Then the team cast real children living in the slum, in order to have a realistic approach. Following an official announcement in mid-January 2013, the film began production in that May 2013. It was shot in real slums and streets across Chennai within 61 working days. The film explores the themes of class-based discrimination, consumerism and media sensationalism. The film's soundtrack and score is composed by G. V. Prakash Kumar and editing was done by Kishore Te. The film had its world premiere on 5 September 2014 as The Crow's Egg at the 39th Toronto International Film Festival, and was further screened at many other film festival circuits before its worldwide theatrical release on 5 June 2015 as Kaaka Muttai. It opened to widespread critical acclaim praising the performances of the cast members, storyline, screenplay, direction and other major technical aspects. In addition to the critical and audience response, the film further achieved commercial success at the box-office. Kaaka Muttai was occasionally listed at the "Best Tamil Films of 2015". It was further considered one of the "25 Greatest Tamil Films of the Decade" by Film Companion; the same website ranked the actors Vignesh and Ramesh's and Aishwarya Rajesh's performance as two of the "100 Greatest Performances of the Decade". The film was remade in Marathi as Half Ticket (2016). Kaaka Muttai won the National Award for Best Children's Film and Best Child Artist, for the actors Ramesh and Vignesh, at the 62nd National Film Awards. It was the strong contender to be shortlisted for the Indian submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film but lost to the Marathi-language film Court (2015). At the 63rd Filmfare Awards South, the film won the Filmfare Award for Best Film, out of its four nominations in the Tamil branch. M. Manikandan received an award for Best Debut Director at the 5th South Indian International Movie Awards, where it was nominated in other four categories. The film also won six Tamil Nadu State Film Awards, six Ananda Vikatan Cinema Awards, two Norway Tamil Film Festival Awards and an Edison Awards. In July 2017, the Tamil Nadu government announced State Film Awards for films released during the 2009–2014 period in which Kaaka Muttai won three awards: Best Actress (Aishwarya Rajesh), Best Child Artist (Vignesh and Ramesh) and a Special Prize for Best Film. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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