Aruvi

A gentle girl born and brought up amidst the ever-growing eco-social-consumeristic environment finds it difficult to fit in the society. She decides to take it hard on the people. What she does is the rest of the story. Aruvi speaks about the social anguish of a girl.[3][4]

The film begins with Aruvi (Aditi Balan) and Emily being interrogated by law enforcement officer Shakeel, who suspects Aruvi to be part of a terrorist organization. Aruvi's parents and friends are called for interrogation who talk about Aruvi's childhood and adolescence. She is a lovingly raised, innocent girl from a middle-class family. Things take a turn as her life when her family turns against and turns her out of the house accusing her of having brought shame to the family.

Her college friend Jessy takes her in for a while, then moves to a hostel and lives with Emily, who is a transgender woman. They work for a man called Arulmani as tailors in an NGO. One day, she goes to Arulmani crying, asking for a loan of 1 lakh rupees, as her father has suffered a minor cardiac arrest. She then takes off and doesn't return. Occasionally, she undergoes touch therapy with a Swami who uses hypnosis to heal stress.

Emily approaches the producers of "Solvathellam Sathyam," a reality show that showcases people's problems on TV. She complains about three men who raped her friend Aruvi. The Assistant Director Peter (Pradeep Antony) agrees to telecast their problem and calls the three men for interrogation.

Next morning, shooting starts as the host (Lakshmi Gopalaswamy) asks Aruvi to narrate what happened to her. Aruvi then explains that the three men are Jessy's father Joseph, Arulmani and the swamiji. Joseph had sexually abused her when she took shelter in his house. Arulmani had taken advantage of Aruvi's situation when she begged for a loan and the Swami had hypnotized and raped her. Aruvi then reveals that she has had AIDS for the past 2 years (which had occurred due to her getting infected through a wound in her mouth after an injury while having coconut water; the seller had inadvertently shed his blood into the straw while cutting open the coconut). She meets her friend Emily in an NGO as both of them have AIDS. Aruvi asks the three men to apologize, but Lakshmi turns against Aruvi, accusing her of intentionally infecting those men. Aruvi is appalled and states everything wrong with the society and the unnecessary stereotypes that every common man has to conform to, in order to fit into this consumeristic world.

The director uses all this drama to his advantage as this would improve his show's TRP rating. Aruvi pulls out a gun and shoots the director in the arm. Later, she calms herself and apologizes to everyone, but as she gets up to leave, Arulmani tackles her and hits Emily. This maddens Aruvi and she starts hitting him with a rebar and takes everyone hostage, holding them at gunpoint. Aruvi then takes control and subjects the hostages to trivial games and activities; the main motive was to impress Aruvi and share others' feelings with each other, failing which Aruvi threatened to shoot them dead. The hostages abide by Aruvi's instructions and go with the activities. The sound of the commotions cause a wide public stir and police to surround the premises. Aruvi gets a call from officer Shakeel and she assures the safety of the hostages and her apprehension to him after a while. During the course of the game, everyone seems to get affected by the Stockholm Syndrome, and they become friendly with Aruvi. She even forgives the three men who raped her.

Aruvi suffers a nosebleed by the time she surrenders to the police. Since Aruvi and Emily are AIDS patients, they cannot be arrested and have to be isolated inside the camp, Aruvi's condition continues to deteriorate as she loses a lot of weight and becomes incapable of taking care of herself. One night, she disappears from the camp and moves to a village all alone. After a few days, all of Aruvi's friends (the hostages) receive a video from Aruvi on Facebook. The video shows her crying and explaining how she misses everyone and speaks about all the regrets in her life. On seeing the video, Peter gathers everyone and takes them to the village in which Aruvi currently resides (an allusion to Peter's story that he narrated to Aruvi during the hostage situation). Aruvi is finally surrounded by everyone she loves towards the end of her lifetime. Everyone she loved gave her a lot of gifts like cakes, pictures and the like. Among such gifts is a card from Peter written " Love you forever Aruvi, Peter" which she saved as it touched her heart, eventually reciprocating his feelings (this too was a revisit of Peter's earlier proposal to Aruvi during the incident, albeit in a bland way before). Everyone cheer Aruvi up by playing the bottle game and having a great time with her to make the last few days of her life sweet and memorable. The movie ends with Peter capturing the image of Aruvi smiling.

• Aditi Balan as Aruvi
• Anjali Varadhan as Emily, Jessica
• Lakshmi Gopalswami as Shobha Parthasarathy, TV show host
• Pradeep Antony as Peter
• Mohammad Ali Baig as DGP Mohammad Shakeel Waqaab
• Kavitha Bharathi
• Madhankumar as Venkataapuri Sri Badri Sesaadri Deetsidhar
• Shwetha Shekar as Jessy
• Arnold Mathew as Karuna, Aruvi's brother
• Praniti Praveen Kumar as young Aruvi
• Hema as Aruvi's mother
• Thirunavukkarasu as Aruvi's father
• Balaji as Subash (Office boy at the channel)
• Apoorva Natraj as Jeyashree

The film was produced by S. R. Prabhu and S. R. Prakashbabu of Dream Warrior Pictures at a production cost of 2 crore, after Saguni (2012), Kaashmora (2016) and Joker (2016).[5] In an interview, S. R. Prabhu says, "We are so much proud that Aruvi has become one of the best films produced under our banner."[6][7] Also he said, the reason to produce this movie was, after the director narrated the story, he couldn't get the story out of his mind for a week.[8][9]

Bindhu Malini and Vedanth Bharadwaj composed the soundtrack and background music,[16] while the lyrics were penned by Kutti Revathi.[17]

Aruvi was screened at various film festivals within India and overseas, including the 2016 Shanghai International Film Festival, before being released globally on 15 December 2017. The film was distributed to over sixty screens across the United States, Malaysia, Singapore and Sri Lanka.[18] The digital rights were sold to Prime Video. The satellite rights of the film were sold to Star Vijay.[19]Amazon has acquired the digital rights of Aruvi[20]

2018 Ananda Vikatan Awards

• Won - Best Production - Dream Warrior Pictures
• Won - Best Editor - Raymond Derrick Crasta
• Won - Best Debut Director - Arun Prabu Purushothaman
• Won - Best Debut Actress - Aditi Balan

2018 Norway Tamil Film Festival Awards

• Won - Best Production - Dream Warrior Pictures
• Won - Best Actress - Aditi Balan
• Won - Best Supporting Actress - Anjali Varadhan
• Won - Best Editor - Raymond Derrick Crasta

2018 Filmfare Awards South

• Won - Critics Award for Best Actor South – Aditi Balan
• Nominated - Best Film - Tamil
• Nominated - Best Director - Tamil – Arun Prabu Purushothaman
• Nominated - Best Supporting Actress - Anjali Varadhan

2018 Vijay Awards

• Won - Best Film - Dream Warrior Pictures
• Won - Best Debut Actress – Aditi Balan

The film was made available for video on demand on Prime Video.[23]

• Official website
• Aruvi at IMDb