Pencil is a 2016 Indian Tamil thriller film inspired from a Korean movie written and directed by debutant Mani Nagaraj and produced by S. P. Ragavesh. Mani Nagaraj is a former assistant director to Gautham Vasudev Menon. The film features G. V. Prakash Kumar and Sri Divya in the lead roles, with the former also composing the film’s music. This film is the remake of the Korean film 4th Period mystery. The film was released on 13 May 2016.
Shiva (G. V. Prakash Kumar) is the best student at his school. His rival, Nithin (Shariq Hassan), the son of a leading film star and a spoiled brat, takes any and every opportunity to knock him down both verbally and physically, and the two are known enemies amongst the other students. One day, Nithin burns Shiva’s thesis and when Shiva finds out, he assaults Nithin in front of the whole school until the school management intervenes. Later, Shiva returns to his class to fight Nithin once again, but finds him dead, with his neck stabbed repeatedly with a sharp pencil. Shiva picks up the bloody pencil from a nearby desk just as his classmate, crush Maya Srinivasan (Sri Divya) shows up, catching him in a most incriminating position. Fortunately for him, she not only believes his innocence, but also offers to help him to solve the mystery and catch the real killer – a task made particularly urgent by the fact that in 40 minutes the rest of the class will return and the body will be discovered. The suspects are many: the school driver, with whom Nithin has a fight over an open wall behind the school; a local goon who enters the school through the open wall to meet his girlfriend, only to be driven out by Nithin; the chemistry teacher Sridhar (Kalavani Thirumurugan), whose romantic relationship with his colleague Nandhini ends after Nithin secretly records an intimate video of the two and blackmails Nandhini with that video to do what he says; and Nithin’s ex-girlfriend Indulekha, whose 8-year-old friend Divya is killed by Nithin when she tries to break up with him and is constantly harassed and blackmailed by Nithin not to report to the school management or the police about the murder. In the end, Maya and Shiva catch the real killer, K.Sundarajan he killed Nitin as a vengeance for killing her daughter Dhivya at the swimming pool. At the end of this film the latter had said that ‘Don’t sell education’.
Directed by Mani Nagaraj
Produced by S. P. Ragavesh
Written by Mani Nagaraj
Starring G. V. Prakash Kumar, Sri Divya
Music by G. V. Prakash Kumar
Cinematography Gopi Amarnath
Edited by Anthony
Production Kalsan Movies Pvt Ltd
Distributed by SVS Pictures
Release dates 13 May 2016
Running time 134 minutes
Country India
Language Tamil
