Actor Dhanush plays a government school teacher on a warpath against rampant privatisation of education in the latest trailer of his debut Tamil-Telugu bilingual film Vaathi, dropped by the makers on Wednesday night.

In the two-minute-26-second-long trailer, we see Dhanush as Bala, an idealistic school teacher in the 1990s. When the chairman (played by Samuthirakani) of a private educational institution announces the adoption of several government colleges to provide better education to students in rural areas, Bala is sent as a teacher to one of such schools, where he instantly falls in love with a fellow teacher (Samyuktha Menon).

However, Bala soon realises that the chairman’s only objective behind adopting the schools was to turn the government institutions into profit-making ventures.

Bala then starts fighting against the education mafia, who are trying hard to shut down government schools, which will deprive several underprivileged children of education.

While the first half of the trailer shows a love-struck Dhanush bowled over by his colleague, the second half is filled with mass action sequences. We also get to see Dhanush beat up bad guys in slow motion — something his fans are used to seeing him do in films.

Watch the trailer here:

Written and directed by Venky Atluri, the film also features Sai Kumar, Tanikella Bharani, Samuthirakani, Thotapalli Madhu, Narra Srinivas, Pammi Sai and Hyper Aadhi. The Telugu version of the film is titled SIR.

Sithara Entertainments, headed by Suryadevara Naga Vamsi, will be co-producing this film along with Sai Soujanya of Fortune Four Cinemas. Music for the film is composed by G.V. Prakash Kumar while cinematography is handled by J Yuvraj.

Vaathi or SIR is all set to hit theatres in Tamil and Telugu languages on February 17.