bengaluru the questions may not have flowed in but filmmakers who sat for a discussion on tuesday morning spoke their hearts out without caring much for political correctness among those who attended the session were theatre and film actor mohan agashe director sunil sukhtankar egyptian filmmaker hala khalil canadabased indian filmmaker brinda muralidhar thailandbased filmmaker paul spurrier and solomon k george director of the kannada film kanda the session took an interesting turn when agashe and sukhtankar refused to take questions that weren t about the film the proof of the pudding is in the eating what is the point of taking questions if people havent seen the film agashe later said about working with the noted director duo sumitra bhave and sunil sukhtankar he said sumitra and sunil look at films as a potent medium that can be used to convey strong social positive messages muralidhar who grew up in mysuru and was part of theatre group samudaya attributed her move to toronto as being the push her career needed i was happy as an actor here but going to toronto pushed me to look at opportunities to think beyond acting you have got to adapt to the opportunities that life in foreign countries throws at you said muralidhar who screened her debut feature film knot not at the film festivalthe film is about domestic abuse but is presented with dose of humour said muralidhar who had strong views about the immigration crisis staring america in the face immigrants are the real identity keepers they are the ones who retain their culture even as they adapt to their foster country she said the discussion between khalil and spurrier about fighting against the americanization of movies threw light on a lessknown facet of the struggles that international filmmakers faced when it came to fighting the big hollywood moviemaking machine as a netpac jury member i got an opportunity to watch kannada films and it has been fascinating to discover films from this region from commercial to experimental there were a range of films its nice to see that the local cinema of the region is a thriving industry i really feel that you should value and cherish it said spurrier who revealed that in thailand the popularity of thai films has been dwindling since 2010 adding to the discussion khalil said in egypt today 90 of our lives is americanized youngsters are focused on getting the right american or english accent and young egyptian filmmakers today want to make films that are like hollywood films there is a need for governments to take steps to ensure local films do not lose out observed khalil