20 Years of Samuthiram: Four interesting facts about the film

Samuthiram, an emotional drama written by Erode Soundar and directed by KS Ravikumar, had an ensemble star cast comprising Sarathkumar, Murali, Manoj Bharathiraja, Kaveri, Abhirami, Sindhu Menon and Monal. The film became popular for its brothers-sister sentiment. The film was remade in Telugu as Siva Rama Raju, Kannada as Paramashiva and Bengali as Kartabya.

Composer duo Sabesh-Murali, who had earlier scored the background music for their brother composer Deva, made their full-fledged debut as composers with the film. The album had five songs Kaa Vitta (sung by Mano and Anuradha Sriram), Kandupidi (Hariharan and Ganga), Azhagana Chinna Devathai (Shankar Mahadevan and Harini), Vidiya Vidiya (Udit Narayanan and Sadhana Sargam) and Pineapple Kannathodu (Shankar Mahadevan and Sujatha)

The brother-sister sentiment might have have gone a bit overboard at times, but it led to remakes in Telugu, Kannada and Bengali. While the Telugu version Siva Rama Raju had Nandamuri Balakrishna, Jagapathi Babu, Venkat, Sivaji and Monica as part of the star cast, the Kannada version Paramashiva had Ravichandran in the lead. In Bengali, the film was titled Kartbya and had Prosenjit Chatterjee, Rachna Banerjee, Lokesh Ghosh and Tapas Paul.

It is said that the film's producer RB Choudhry had faced some financial problems during the shoot, which led to the film's director KS Ravikumar funding the first schedule of the film. The producer thanked the director for his gesture at the audio launch of the film. The film was released on August 31. Though it received mixed reviews by the critics, it was a declared a success at the box office.

A few months before the release of the film, Murali had acted in another film laced with brother-sentiment drama titled Aanandham. In both the films, he plays the second brother. While the former had Mammootty as his elder sibling, Samudhiram had Sarath Kumar as the anna. Rambha had played Murali's wife in Aanandham and Sindhu Menon portrayed the role of his wife in Samuthiram. The film also had its share of comedy, with Goundamani and Senthil handling the mantle.