In the neighbouring states, particularly Tamil Nadu, a lot of short film makers have managed to find producers and are making decent path breaking films in the mainstream. Why do we not see this happening in Karnataka?

The passion for making films is a lot more in Tamil Nadu than in Karnataka. Also, when you know that a lot of people are going to be watching your film, you, as a creative person, would want to do a lot more good films.

The audience base in Karnataka is small, quality has gradually dropped in the last two decades, and my generation especially has moved away from watching Kannada films.

I hear only 15 per cent of Kannada speaking people in the state watch Kannada films. Also, if you notice, in Chennai, the most educated guy will speak in Tamil. We have lost that in our state. The youth have lost the ‘connect’ with the Kannada language. I hope it changes slowly.

When you grow up in a city like Bangalore, you end up being a little confused when it comes to language. I myself cannot speak great English or talk Hindi fluently or even Kannada completely.

Why didn’t you approach a production house in Mumbai, say UTV, who have ventured into Bengali and Malayalam cinema, to invest in your project? That would have taken care of your distribution.

Had I gone to them they might have loved my script at a creative level and possibly even come forward to fund it. But, may be not in Kannada. They may have insisted that I make it in Tamil or Hindi where the returns are high.

I did do a lot of research as I was jobless at that time. In the last one-and-a-half years, we see people pitching for crowd-funding across social media platforms like Facebook and they are saying, look we exist and we can make a good film if you support us in your own small way.

With digital technology and all that, the day is not very far off when you will see more of this kind of thing.