Bettada Jeeva - Man of the Hills’, the Kannada film based on Jnanpith awardee, K Shivaram Karanth’s novel, considered a literary classic, was screened at the 42nd IFFI festival.

Directed by P Sheshadri, the film seeks to create awareness about the importance of the ghats and how they can be saved. However, the poster put up for the promotion of the film had misrepresented the title and the director’s note at the festival.

"Bettada Jeeva, which means Man of the Hills, was wrongly altered to Man of the films. Not only this, the director’s note was replaced with the note of another film director," said Sheshadri adding, "Two years back, at the retrospective section that paid tribute to Dr Rajkumar, a wrong photograph, that of renowned Kannada director, Girish Kasaravalli was published instead. This was an insult to the late superstar Rajkumar."

The director further added, "It is sad that regional films do not get prime slots. If we get a prime slot we can attract more people."

The director also voiced another grievance, that of the NFDC charging ` 5000 for processing the film, and taking two years to respond to a confirmation. The national award winning actor H G Dattatreya said, "It is not right that the NFDC confine themselves to films produced under their banner only. They give chance to only those films at such festivals."

While talking of the difficulties experienced while shooting the film, the director informed that they shot their film in a remote area, and traveling to and fro from this place proved to be an arduous task. He said that he did not expect the movie to meet with such success.