Vasanthabalan (sometimes credited as Vasantha Balan) is an Indian Tamil film director and screenwriter. Vasanthabalan began his film career as an editing assistant and later became an assistant director to S.Shankar in the latter's directorial debut, Gentleman (1993). He continued to work under Shankar in three more films—Kaadhalan (1994), Indian (1996) and Jeans (1998)—and first attempted to make a film titled Aathi with Rajasekar in the lead role, but the project was stalled. He later made his break as an independent director with the box-office failure Album (2002).