Vijay Sethupathi's Maamanithan wins big in Tokyo Film Awards 2022

Director Seenu Ramasamy's Maamanithan, featuring Vijay Sethupathi and Gayathrie Shankar, has won a gold medal at the Tokyo Film Awards this year. The filmmaker took to Twitter to make the announcement.

“Happy to share that our Maamanithan feature film won (at the) Tokyo Film Awards 2022. Thanks to producer Yuvan Shankar Raja (sic)," the director wrote in the post.

According to reports, Maamanithan won the gold in the Best Asian Film category, while Takahiro Kawabe's Love Song won the silver and Mart Bira's Nomadic Doctor took home the bronze medal at the event.

Maamanithan tells the story of an ordinary guy, who wishes to provide good education to his kids by getting them admitted to a private school. To increase his income, he enters into a deal with a real estate developer and in the process gets cheated. The rest of the film deals with the problem he faces. Vijay Sethupathi plays the role of an auto rickshaw driver and Gayathrie plays his wife and also a mother of two kids.

Maamanithan garnered huge praise from various quarters after its release. Director Shankar called it a “realistic classic”, adding Vijay Sethupathi's brilliant performance deserved a National Award.

Maamanithan features the late KPAC Lalitha, Guru Somasundaram and Shaji Chen, among others. The film was released in theatres on June 24 and is currently streaming on Aha Tamil.

OTTplay's review of the film read, “There is a real problem with the narration style. In all the crucial moments, since the voiceover narrations happen in flashbacks, we lose out on the point of view from which the story is being told. This means that the audience is not allowed to be a part of the story directly. All we hear are second-hand experiences that are not necessarily authentic.”

Further, the OTTplay review added, “The Vijay Sethupathi-starrer would have made for an extraordinary film, had Seenu Ramasamy shifted his focus on Savitri’s (Gayathrie) ordeals.”

Maamanithan, produced by Yuvan Shankar Raja, has cinematography by Sukumar and editing by Sreekar Prasad.