Now more than ever, beginners are breaking into that walled garden that the film world always seemed to be. “Film-making is not a mystery anymore,” says Pawan Kumar. “Today you could just watch movies, or the making of a film, from all over the world and develop your own skill. With YouTube and Facebook, people can find their own audience. It does not anymore require a validation from old school members of the industry,” he adds. Last year, he wove a thriller around something as mundane as a makeshift road median atop a Bangalore flyover. The film U-Turn went on to become one of the big Kannada hits of the year. Now, he’s involved with Ondu Motteya Kathe (Egghead), a film about a bald man, directed by debutant Raj B. Shetty, which premiered at the New York Indian Film Festival in May. “Anybody can make a film. You want to make a film, you can do it right now,” says Anup Bhandary, a former Infosys techie whose debut film Rangitaranga was the longest running Kannada film in 2015. Of course, there’s a rider there. As he puts it, “only a handful know how to do it well.”