Pannaiyarum Padminiyum

The movie begins with a young man (Attakathi Dinesh) buying a car, he says that his inspiration is from a Pannaiyar (landlord) in his village and his love for a vintage Fiat PAL Premier Padmini car.

Pannaiyar (Jayaprakash) and his wife Chellamma (Thulasi) are kindhearted and broadminded people who are responsible for introducing essential modern technology like TV, radio, telephones, etc., to their villagers. The villagers also enjoy the liberty of using all these items with his permission. The couple have a married daughter named Suja (Neelima Rani), who is greedy. Whenever she visits her parents, she makes it a point to take whichever device she finds pleasing to her eye.

One day, Pannaiyar's friend Shanmugam (Mahadevan) comes to his house with his brand new Fiat PAL Premier Padmini car and Pannaiyar is instantly smitten by the latest car's features. To Pannaiyar's surprise and happiness, Shanmugam says that he will leave the car for a couple of months under Pannaiyar's care since he is going to visit his pregnant daughter and also gives his consent to Pannaiyar to use the car as he wishes. Since then, an excited Pannaiyar takes care of it like a prized possession. Since he does not know to drive, he appoints a local young man named Murugesan (Vijay Sethupathi) as the driver and the household servant Peedai (Bala Saravanan) as the cleaner. Pannaiyar and Chellamma treat them like their own sons. School-going kids often swarm around the car asking for a ride in the front seat, and one little boy in particular is very much interested, so Peedai jokingly asks him to bring five rupees to get a front seat ride, and the boy starts saving his pocket money sincerely day by day. Like all the other facilities belonging to Pannaiyar, the villagers also get the opportunities to use the car for their emergency purposes. On one such day, when Murugesan is helping a family at a funeral, he comes across a beautiful girl named Malarvizhi (Aishwarya Rajesh) among the mourners. He is attracted to her instantly and she also falls for him, and they start to love each other.

One night, Chellamma requests her husband to learn driving before their wedding anniversary so that they can go to the temple together and he obliges. Pannaiyar is determined to learn driving and asks Murugesan to train him. Murugesan fears that he will lose his job if Pannaiyar learns driving, so he procrastinates as much as he can. As a result, Pannaiyar's driving progress is very slow. Meanwhile, Shanmugam's daughter (Sneha) unexpectedly visits them and says that her father suddenly died. Pannaiyar is shocked to hear about the loss of his friend and hands over the car keys and some documents that Shanmugam left under his care. But the daughter leaves the car behind as a token of remembrance of her father. Now that they are the proud owners of the car, the Pannaiyar family is content, and certain heartwarming incidents change Murugesan's mind and he wholeheartedly plans to teach Pannaiyar to drive, but during one of his lessons, Pannaiyar causes an accident that creates minor damages to the car, which starts having technical difficulties from then onwards.

Meanwhile, Suja visits her parents and her eyes fall on the new car and she demands for it. Unable to refuse, Pannaiyar halfheartedly lets her take it, much to the disappointment of Murugesan and Chellamma. On Pannaiyar and Chellamma's wedding anniversary, as the family is preparing to get into a bullock cart to go to the temple, they see an irate Suja coming to their house with the car. She says that she and her husband would have been in an accident because the car stopped working and insults her father for giving a useless old car. Chellamma steps in and scolds her and Suja storms away angrily, leaving the car behind. Murugesan, Pannaiyar and Chellamma dismiss Suja's tantrum and are rather pleased that their car is finally back. They try to start the car but it unfortunately would not start. In utter frustration, Peedai jumps over the car and sits on the bonnet, and suddenly it starts. Finally, as per their earlier plan, Pannaiyar manages to drive successfully and take his wife Chellamma in his own car to the temple on their anniversary.

Meanwhile, the little boy who saved money to get a front seat ride sadly leaves out of town for higher studies without his wish being fulfilled. Years later, that boy turns out to be the young man (Attakathi Dinesh) who bought a new car at the beginning of the movie. He visits his hometown and searches for the old car in Pannaiyar's house. Murugesan sees the man and asks if he needs a ride to the town. The man says yes and finally sits in the front seat of the car, and his longtime wish is fulfilled at last as they drive away.

• Vijay Sethupathi as Murugesan
• Jayaprakash as Pannaiyar
• Aishwarya Rajesh as Malarvizhi
• Thulasi as Chellamma
• Bala Saravanan as Peedai
• Neelima Rani as Suja
• Mahadevan as Shanmugam
• Sneha as Shanmugam's daughter (Guest appearance)
• Dinesh as the narrator (Guest appearance)
• Senthil Nayagam as the narrator (Guest appearance)
• Gaja as the narrator (Guest appearance)

Pannaiyarum Padminiyum is based on the short film of the same name.[8]

Pannaiyarum Padminiyum was released on 7 February 2014. The film was screened in many International Film Festivals such as Jargar Film Festival,[9] Prague International Film Festival, Habitat Film Festival,[10] 12th Chennai International Film Festival (CIFF), 7th Bengaluru International Film Festival (BIFFES) [11] in which it won the special jury award.[12] It was the only Tamil film selected to be screened at the 19th International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK).[13]

The soundtrack album was composed by Justin Prabhakaran, and the lyrics were written by Vaali and the composer himself.[23]

Even before the release of Pannaiyarum Padminiyum, actor Nani had purchased the Telugu remake rights of the film.[24]

• Pannaiyarum Padminiyum at IMDb