Tamil teen crime-thriller "Vazhakku En 18/9" won the best film award at the first South Asian Film Festival (SAFF) held in Paris recently.
The critically acclaimed film opened to a packed house at the event, held between Jan 16-20, and left the international audience spellbound. At the closing ceremony of the festival, it was officially awarded the best film award.
Directed by Balaji Sakthivel, it is the story of modern day youth, whose lives are shackled by sex, lies and crime. Made on a shoestring budget, the film starred newcomers such as Mithun Murali, Sri, Urmila Mahanta and Manisha Yadav.
It was also one of the Tamil films in the run for India's Oscar entry for best foreign language film.
The other Tamil film also screened at the SAFF was Karthik Subbaraj's horror-thriller "Pizza".
Other contenders in the best film category were Ajay Bahl's "BA Pass", Amit Ashraf's Bangladeshi film "Udhao", Gurvinder Singh's "Anhey Ghore Da Daan" and Nepali film "Loot" by Nischal Basnet .
Some other Indian films screened under a special category included films such as Onir's "My Brother Nikhil", A.R Murugadoss "7 am Arivu" and Abhinay Deo's "Delhi Belly".
Aimed at proving that South Asian cinema is not only about Bollywood, the SAFF screened movies from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal.