When the thieves broke into the nation residence of a famend movie director in southern India, taking gold, silver and money, they made a clear getaway. But days later, a small plastic bag appeared exterior the home’s gates, stitched shut with skinny sticks and containing one thing wrapped in a white handkerchief.

Inside was a medal for a prestigious nationwide award that the director, M. Manikandan, had gained in 2021 for one in all his movies.

With it was a quick notice handwritten in Tamil, a regional language.

“Sir, please forgive us,” the notice learn. “Your hard work belongs to you alone.”

The housebreaking and partial return, with its small-town intrigue and big-hearted absurdity, might have figured within the form of films Mr. Manikandan and different filmmakers in India’s south make.

While Bollywood will get a lot consideration and recognition exterior the nation, a few of India’s most lovable and artistic movies come from its diverse regional cinemas, in languages similar to Tamil and Malayalam.

Mr. Manikandan broke via with a movie about two egg-stealing, slum-dwelling brothers with a single purpose — to do no matter it took to style pizza. The movie for which he gained the purloined medal, “Kadaisi Vivasayi” or “The Last Farmer,” was a commentary on the difficulties of farming in India. But its surreal twists additionally laid naked the absurdities of the nation’s paperwork.

When an aged farmer refuses to surrender his plot of land, he’s falsely accused of a criminal offense. The courts acknowledge his innocence, however he should nonetheless stay behind bars for weeks for the bureaucratic course of to run its course, so a police officer is tasked with caring for his small plot.

“What will I do with the money?” the farmer says in the film, rejecting any notions of giving up farming or promoting his land. “Use it as a pillow when I sleep?”

The thieves who got here for Mr. Manikandan’s nation residence clearly had concepts about what to do with cash. But additionally a conscience, or perhaps respect for artwork.

Sathish Kumar, a head constable who’s a part of the intelligence-gathering group of the native police unit investigating, mentioned the home, within the city of Usilampatti, was damaged into by way of the entrance door final week. Taken was about $1,200 in native foreign money, 40 grams of gold chains and silver ornaments with a complete weight of a few kilogram.

It is a one-bedroom property, with an workplace and a backyard. Mr. Manikandan is there solely often, dwelling principally in Chennai, the state capital, about 300 miles away.

“A pug guards the place while servants come in and out to feed him and clean the place,” Mr. Kumar mentioned.

Thefts are frequent within the city, although most have been solved with assist of CCTV footage, Mr. Kumar mentioned. But within the housebreaking at Mr. Manikandan’s place, there have been no clues.

When the movie director’s supervisor discovered the plastic bag with the medal on the east facet of the property 4 days after the housebreaking, he known as the police directly, in keeping with Mr. Kumar. Mr. Kumar and his group took the bag and the medal into police custody, hoping they lastly had a lead on the culprits. But the fingerprints collected have resulted in no matches.