Vajravel Anand

Vajravel Anand is a famous movie director who has worked mainly in the Tamil industry. He was born on 30 October 1966. His place of birth is Park Town, Chennai, Tamil Nadu. He is not only known for his work as a movie director but also as cinematographer, writer, and photographer. His parents are Venkatesan and Anasuya Venkataraman. His education includes a bachelor's degree in Physics, which he had completed in June 1986 from DG Vaishnav College and Masters in visual communications, which he had done from Loyola College in Chennai.

He had a budding passion for photography from his college days. Till 1992, he did jobs in various newspapers and journals as a photographer. He also did considerable work as a cinematographer in about 14 films. He started his career as a cinematographer with the movie Thenmavin Kombath in 1994. These films are in Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam languages. His most memorable work as a cinematographer was seen in the movie Sivaji, which was released in 2001. The interesting fact about this movie is that it was the most costly movie made at that time.

Then, he diverted his field into the direction and directed seven movies in total. His first movie as a director was Kana Kanden in 2005. He has done collaborative work with several script writers. His other movies as a director were Ayan, Ko, Maattrraan, Anegan, Kavan, and Kaappaan. He had also done acting in the film Meera, which was released in 1992.

Due to his commendable work in the film industry, he has won the National Film Award for best cinematography in 1995 and the Filmfare Award for the best cinematographer in South, in 2007. He was also placed into nominations of the Filmfare Award For Best Director – Tamil in the years 2009 and 2011. In the next year, he was nominated for SIIMA Award For Best Director. Apart from National and Filmfare, he had won Screen Awards for best cinematography in 1997 and 2001.