Nayagan (1987)

Nayagan, also known as Nayakan, is a 1987 Tamil film, written and directed by Mani Ratnam and starring Kamal Haasan. It is based on the real-life Bombay underworld don Varada aka Varadarajan Mudaliar, and sympathetically depicts the struggle of South Indians living in Bombay. The film also stars Saranya Ponvannan in her silver screen debut, Karthika, Nassar, Janagaraj, Delhi Ganesh and Tinnu Anand. The soundtrack of the film was composed by Ilaiyaraaja and met with a successful response after release.

The film released on 21 October 1987 coinciding with Diwali and received critical acclaim worldwide. Kamal Haasan's performance as Velu Naiker earned him a National Film Award for Best Actor. The film also earned the National Award for Best Cinematography (P. C. Sriram) and Best Art Direction (Thotta Tharani). The film was sent by India for the Best Foreign Language Film category at the 60th Academy Awards. In 2005, the Time Magazine included Nayagan in its list of "All-Time 100 Best Films". This has also been included in The Moving Arts Film Journal greatest films of all time. Nayagan was also included as one of 20 greatest Indian films of all time. This list emerged from the 'T20 of Indian Cinema' poll in which 20 experts from around the country - 10 young filmmakers and 10 seasoned critics and scholars participated.

The film was dubbed in Telugu under the title Nayakudu. It was also remade in Hindi as Dayavan in 1988. A Hindi dub of the film was released in 1999 as Velu Nayakan.

Directed by	Mani Ratnam
Produced by	Mani Ratnam G. Venkateswaran
Written by	Mani Ratnam Balakumaran
Starring	Kamal Haasan Saranya Karthika Janagaraj Nassar
Music by	Ilaiyaraaja
Cinematography	P. C. Sriram
Editing by	B. Lenin V. T. Vijayan
Distributed by	Sujatha Productions
Release date(s)	October 21, 1987
Running time	145 minutes
Country	India
Language	Tamil
Budget	1 crore

On 21st October 2012, the film completed its silver jubilee of its success.