Angadi Theru

The film starts with Jyothi (Mahesh) and Kani (Anjali) playing and making fun of each other. As they don't have any house, they find a place in street where masonry workers are sleeping. While they were dreaming, a fire engine after colliding with another vehicle completely loses its control comes out of the way and hits the people sleeping in street. Kani and Jyoti are badly injured and is rushed to hospital. Now the flashback starts and goes to a village in Tirunelveli.

Jyothi Lingam (Mahesh) is a bright student and son of a mason who leads a happy life in his village near Tirunelveli. One day tragedy strikes as his father the only earning member dies in an accident while crossing an unmanned railway gate, and young boy now has to look after his mother and two sisters.

Jyothi, along with hundreds of others, are employed at the Senthil Murugan Stores run by the big businessman. In each floor at the textile showroom, there are around 50 to 60 sales boys and girls who work in pitiable conditions from early in the morning to late night, without any rest.

He meets Kani (Anjali), a fiery independent girl. The difficult and harrowing times in the store bring them together as they face up to a cruel and lewd store supervisor Karungali (A. Venkatesh), who beats up the boys and molests the girls when they play around during duty hours. As Jyothi says there is no escape from the "Jail like" atmosphere in the shop where employees are treated more like slave labour in a concentration camp than without any human dignity. After some quarrels and arguments these two survive in a concentration camp like condition.

In the meantime, actress Sneha visits the showroom for the shooting of the advertisement. Marimuthu is a die hard fan of Sneha. He has collected all the pictures of sneha from her childhood and was keeping with him. He was very interested to see sneha. Amidst of the security, he caught sneha's attention and meets her and shows her the album. Sneha is surprised and happy to see the album. She says to Marimuthu that she will keep the album herself. While Jyothi and Kani were talking in the showroom, the supervisor comes there. On seeing this, they both hides in the place. Unfortunately the security locks the door of the showroom without knowing this. Kani shouts at Jyothi and they don't know what to do. They have to spend the whole night there itself. After some time they are putting the dresses in that room one by one, sings and dances.

Like this they spends the night and the next day morning they goes to their places as if they came only in the morning.Unfortunately the dance by Jyothi and Kani got caught in the camera running there for the shooting with Sneha. Annachi sees this and calls the supervisor. Supervisor caughts both Jyothi and Kani and beats them. Then the supervisor gives a complaint to the police that Jyothi had stolen a costly saree from the shop and the police takes Jyothi away. Jyothi tells the inspector that he knows all the fraud activities done by annachi. So the inspector calls annachi and advises him to take back the complaint. Otherwise it will be difficult if Jyothi tells all these things to media. So Jyothi is released from the custody.

Jyothi goes to the showroom and threatens the supervisor that if they did not release Kani, he will tell these things to the public there. On hearing this, Annachi orders the supervisor to send Kani with Jyothi. They both leave the place and searches for job in all the shops in that street. Finally a blind old aged person who is selling clothes on the platform tells Jyothi that he will give commission to them if they help him in selling his clothes. So they starts selling clothes and earns some money for the day. The old man tells him a street where they can safely sleep. They goes to the street and that is the end of flashback.

The camera now points to the hospital where Jyothi and Kani are admitted. Jyothi regains his consciousness and sees Marimathu there. Marimuthu joined as makeup man to Sneha. Jyothi had slight injuries on his head,legs and hands. Jyothi asks Marimuthu about Kani. But Marimuthu remains silent. So Jyothi himself gets out from his bed irrespective of the injury in his legs and searches to find Kani. He was shocked to see Kani there without legs. She has lost her both legs in the accident. Marimuthu advises Jyothi to forget Kani as she cannot do things on her own and she needs someone's help. If Jyothi takes care of her, who will earn for his family?

Many things are running in Jyothi's mind and finally he decides to marry Kani. The film ends with the scene showing Kani sitting in the platform selling things and Jyothi sells things by walking in the street.

• Mahesh as Jyothi Lingam
• Anjali as Kani
• A. Venkatesh as Pavunu alias Karungali
• Pandi as Marimuthu, Jyothi Lingam's friend
• John Vijay as Director
• Pala. Karuppiah as Annachi
• Imman Annachi as Store Worker
• Sneha as herself (Cameo appearance)

The soundtrack album was composed by G. V. Prakash Kumar, while Vijay Antony composed two songs and also scored the background music . Lyrics were penned by Na. Muthukumar. Shreya Ghoshal won Filmfare Award for Best Female Playback Singer – Tamil for the song 'Un Perai Sollum Podhe'.[1]

All lyrics are written by Na. Muthukumar.

The film met with widespread critical acclaim. Behindwoods mentioned, "Angadi Theru is an eye opener to all those who are on the rosier side of life,it’s an overdose of emotions, but you don’t mind it: simply because the characters have handled the scenes so skilfully."[2] Parvathi Srinivasan from Rediff described the film as a, "kind of cinema you keep hoping for and only rarely get," labeling it, "A must watch."[3] Many reviewers appreciated Anjali's performance with Behindwoods commenting that, "The girl looks every bit her role with an impressive gamut of emotions running through her face."[4] Chennaionline.com gave credit to the theme of the film by stating that, "Vasanthabalan must be applauded for courageously presenting us a film that looks into the darker side of the glittery world of massive show rooms.[5]

Angaadi Theru won the 2010 Best Film Award at the Chennai International Film Festival on 24 December 2010.[6] It also won accolades in the following award ceremonies.

• Christopher, Michael & Helen Staufer (2011). "Urban. Village. Urban-Village. Angaditheru and its mofussil department store society in Chennai", in: manycinemas 1, 24-37

• Angadi Theru at IMDb