A young girl in school uniform, walking along an unidentified road in Thiruvananthapuram, with a backpack on her and waving a lunch bag, stops suddenly to see people she knows in a car, waiting for her. Someone inside the car asks her, “Did you hear anything?”
“What?” the girl asks, smiling. “You have won the Kerala State Award for Best Child Actor (Female),” a man in the car tells her. Her face breaks into a big wide smile but she refuses to believe it. “No, you are fibbing,” she says, and then asks, “seriously?”. It is true, the people in the car say. Thanmaya Sol has won the award for her performance in Vazhakku.
Her family had gone in the car to wait for her when she came back from school and surprise her with the news. The video they shot of the girl’s genuine surprise has gone viral over the internet.
Thanmaya’s father Arun Sol was the associative producer of Vazhakku, directed by Sanal Kumar Sasidharan. The film, led by actors Kani Kusruthi, Tovino Thomas and Sudev Nair, revolves around the meeting of a man on the verge of divorce with a mother and her daughter with speech disability. Thanmaya played the little girl with disability.
The Kerala State film awards for the year 2022 were announced on the afternoon of Friday, July 21. Mammootty won his sixth best male actor award while Vincy Aloshious won her first state award for best female actor for the film Rekha. Nanapakal Nerathu Mayakkam that won Mammootty the award was also adjudged the best film of the year. The other child actor award was won by Master Davinci for the film Pallotty 90's Kids. Kunchacko Boban’s Nna Thaan Case Kodu and Soubin Shahir’s Ila Veezha Poonchira were two other films which won several awards.