
The brothers spend their time playing games and stealing and devouring eggs from crows' nests. With the boys' father in prison for unknown reasons and with an ageing mother-in-law, the mother does her best to keep the kitchen fires burning.


In a tiny concrete-and-tin Chennai home in the slums live two young brothers with their mother and grandmother. In July 2017, the Tamil Nadu government announced State Film Awards for films released during the 2009–2014 period in which Kaaka Muttai won three awards: Best Actress (Aishwarya Rajesh), Best Child Artist (Vignesh and Ramesh) and a Special Prize for Best Film. The film also won six Tamil Nadu State Film Awards, six Ananda Vikatan Cinema Awards, two Norway Tamil Film Festival Awards and an Edison Awards. Manikandan received an award for Best Debut Director at the 5th South Indian International Movie Awards, where it was nominated in other four categories. At the 63rd Filmfare Awards South, the film won the Filmfare Award for Best Film, out of its four nominations in the Tamil branch. It was the strong contender to be shortlised for the Indian submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film but lost to the Marathi-language film Court (2015). Kaaka Muttai won the National Award for Best Children's Film and Best Child Artist, for the actors Ramesh and Vignesh, at the 62nd National Film Awards.

The film is remade in Marathi as Half Ticket (2016). It was further considered one of the "25 Greatest Tamil Films of the Decade" by Film Companion the same website ranked the actors Vignesh and Ramesh's performances regarding the "100 Greatest Performances of the Decade". Kaaka Muttai was occasionally listed at the "Best Tamil Films of 2015". In addition to the critical and audience response, the film further achieved commercial success at the box-office. It opened to widespread critical acclaim praising the performances of the cast members, storyline, screenplay, direction and other major technical aspects. The film had its world premiere on 5 September 2014 at the 39th Toronto International Film Festival, and was further screened at many other film festival circuits before its worldwide theatrical release on 5 June 2015. Prakash Kumar and editing was done by Kishore Te. The film's soundtrack and score is composed by G. The film explores the themes of class-based discrimination, consumerism and media sensationalism. It was shot in real slums and streets across Chennai within 61 working days. Following an official announcement in mid-January 2013, the film began production in that May.

Then the team cast real children living in the slum, in order to have a realistic approach. When asked by Vetrimaaran to develop a script, Manikandan wrote a storyline based on slum children and also inspired incidents from his life. Vetrimaaran approached Manikandan in a film festival, after he saw one of his short films being screened. The film's storyline revolves around two slum children of Chennai, whose desire is to taste a pizza. Jointly produced by Dhanush's Wunderbar Films, Vetrimaaran's Grass Root Film Company and distributed by Fox Star Studios, it features newcomers, Vignesh and Ramesh, in the lead roles alongside Aishwarya Rajesh, Ramesh Thilak, Yogi Babu in supporting roles and Silambarasan in a cameo appearance. and released internationally as The Crow's Egg) is a 2015 Indian Tamil-language comedy-drama film written, directed and filmed by M.
