Natesh Hegde’s film festival darling Pedro shunned at BIFFes; producer Rishab Shetty disappointed

Ever since its international premiere at the Busan International Film Festival, young filmmaker Natesh Hegde ’s Pedro, quite literally, had the Midas Touch, winning accolades both for the film and himself. Critics who have seen Pedro have nothing but praise for Natesh’s incredible story-telling, and audiences back home have been anxiously awaiting to hear when they would be able to catch a glimpse of it. Well, it looks like that wait just got a little longer.

Pedro, which is currently at the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival, where it is competing in the India Gold section, is not part of the movies that are being made available to watch online for free at the fest. As such, the makers, especially actor-director Rishab Shetty, who has backed the project, was hopeful of giving the film a big screen outing at the Bengaluru International Film Festival. But that also has come to nought, with the festival organizers not listing Pedro as part of it.

Naturally, Rishab, who has been basking in the positive reviews and feedback from veteran Kannada filmmakers that he showed the film too, has been disappointed by the turn of events. Taking to social media, Rishab gave voice to his disappointment, with a statement in which he alleges that there’s been a concerted effort to prevent Pedro’s screening at BIFFes. Rishab, though, is taking this bitter experience in his stride and promises to bring Pedro to audiences soon.

In earlier media interactions, Natesh had said that the team was looking at breaking the myth that festival circuit films do not find takers in movie halls and that they were looking at bringing Pedro to theatres. But with multiple commercial films across languages lined up for release all the way till June this year, there doesn’t seem to be a good window available to make that happen. A source adds that Rishab will now look at taking the film online for a direct-to-OTT release and that it may not be long before audiences get to see it.