Tamil Cinema at the 72nd National Awards

• Top winner: Amaran led Tamil cinema at the 72nd National Awards, winning Best Director, Best Background Score, and Best Editing.

• Dhanush double: Raayan won Best Tamil Film and Captain Miller earned Best Film Promoting National or Social Values, plus a Special Mention for Dhanush.

• Maharaja wins: Maharaja claimed Best Action Direction and Best Supporting Actress for Sachana Namidass, but Vijay Sethupathi was snubbed for Best Actor.

• Meiyazhagan overlooked: Meiyazhagan received only a Special Mention for sound mixing despite strong audience and critical reception.

• Shut out: Vaazhai, Kottukkaali, and Thangalaan missed out entirely on major acting and filmmaking categories.

Amaran was undeniably the most decorated Tamil film of the night, picking up Best Director for Rajkumar Periasamy, Best Music Direction (Background Score) for G.V. Prakash Kumar, and Best Editing for R. Kalaivannan. That’s three awards for a film that was already one of 2024’s biggest box office stories, and it cements Periasamy’s position as one of Kollywood’s most important directorial voices right now.

Dhanush-directed Raayan won Best Tamil Film, which is a significant honour for an actor-turned-director who put everything into that project. Captain Miller, also starring Dhanush, received the Best Film Promoting National or Social Values award and earned Dhanush a Special Mention, making him the only person in Tamil cinema to feature twice in this year’s announcement. Maharaja claimed Best Action Direction and Best Supporting Actress for Sachana Namidass, ensuring Vijay Sethupathi’s film didn’t leave empty-handed even as its lead actor was overlooked.

G.V. Prakash Kumar’s third National Award deserves its own moment. Winning for background score on a film as emotionally demanding as Amaran, which tells the true story of Major Mukund Varadarajan, is validation that the composer brought real depth to material that could easily have leaned on sentimentality alone. His social media reaction, “An immense blessing for the third time”, captured exactly how much these recognitions compound in meaning over a career.

The Big Snubs: Maharaja and Meiyazhagan Miss Out

This is where it gets contentious, and Tamil fans on social media made sure the jury knew it. Going into the announcements, several Tamil films were considered strong contenders for marquee categories: Meiyazhagan, Vaazhai, Kottukkaali, Thangalaan, and Maharaja were all expected to challenge for top honours. None of them won in the major acting or filmmaking categories, and the reaction online was swift and pointed.

Maharaja, directed by Nithilan Swaminathan and featuring what many fans and critics considered one of Vijay Sethupathi’s most carefully constructed performances, walked away with Best Action Direction and Best Supporting Actress for Sachana Namidass. Both are respectable wins, but for a film that spent much of its theatrical run being hailed as a standout thriller, the absence of a Best Actor nomination for Vijay Sethupathi hit Tamil audiences hard. The film’s central performance, built around restraint and a slow reveal of emotional stakes that spans the entire second half, is precisely the kind of work that National Awards juries have historically favoured. Many fans felt it was exactly the category where Sethupathi should have been competing.

Meiyazhagan, the Karthi and Arvind Swami-led bromance drama directed by Mu. Maran, received a Special Mention for sound mixing, a recognition, yes, but one that reads as a consolation against the backdrop of how warmly the film was received. The film’s emotional register, its quietly observed portrait of friendship and time, had built it a devoted audience that genuinely expected the jury to notice. Receiving a technical special mention when the narrative craft was the film’s real achievement stung for a lot of people.

Social media reactions from Tamil fans ranged from resigned disappointment to outright frustration. Comparisons between the jury’s choices and what audiences had responded to during the theatrical run kept recurring across posts and threads. The common thread in those conversations was a feeling that films made with restraint and regional specificity, exactly the qualities the National Awards are supposed to celebrate, were being passed over in favour of narratives with more visible national or political resonance. Whether that’s a fair reading of the jury’s process is debatable, but as a reflection of audience sentiment, it’s hard to dismiss.

Tamil Films at the 72nd National Awards: Results at a Glance

Here is a structured breakdown of how each Tamil film fared across award categories at the 72nd National Awards.

Film	Award Category	Recipient	Result
Amaran	Best Director	Rajkumar Periasamy	Won
Amaran	Best Music Direction (Background Score)	G.V. Prakash Kumar	Won
Amaran	Best Editing	R. Kalaivannan	Won
Raayan	Best Tamil Film	Dhanush (director)	Won
Captain Miller	Best Film Promoting National or Social Values; Special Mention	Dhanush	Won
Maharaja	Best Action Direction; Best Supporting Actress	Sachana Namidass (Supporting Actress)	Won (Best Actor for Vijay Sethupathi: Snubbed)
Meiyazhagan	Special Mention (Sound Mixing)	Not specified	Special Mention only
Vaazhai, Kottukkaali, Thangalaan	Major acting and filmmaking categories	Not specified	Snubbed