Actor/filmmaker Nandita Das has a bone to pick with film festivals. She feels that festivals restrict the audience of films by screening them at platforms only accessible to a particular class, reported Times Of India.

Das was speaking at a session titled 'What is regional cinema, what is national cinema' at the celebration of the 60th anniversary of Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali.

She opined that many moving stories haven't been able to reach a larger audience because of their restricted accessibility: "When you are making an independent film (for the lack of a better word) and then you are also doing the festival thing and not be labelled as that this is a festival film, this is for the classes, this is not for masses (sic). Who is going to decide that the man on the street is not ready to watch it? It's, I think, our arrogance and the class that we belong to, that we think it is for us and they are not ready to watch it."

She elaborated about the rift created by such films: "It doesn't have to be a festival versus audience kind of a film. These regional films while they cut across, while they can be the international thing... finally, a filmmaker who makes it would want all audiences to watch it in their own city, state and all over. This divide is where one is uncomfortable."

The filmmaker, who is known for her powerful acting in such films as Mehreen Jabbar's Ramchand Pakistani, Deepa Mehta's Earth and Fire, in addition to many South Indian films, also commented on the complications of the issue: "That's why we keep coming back to the fact there is too much interference and nexus between the producer, distributor, audience and all of these people, and the director is kind of (caught) between them."