Chennai, Oct 15 (IANS) The Cauvery river issue will soon hit the Tamil screen. Young director Sharath Surya is making a film on the problems of the Cauvery delta farmers.

The film will be titled "Pachai Manithan", which can be translated as 'Green Man' as well as 'Pure Man'.

Surya has set up a Pachai Manithan Trust to carry out the Rs. 10.6-million project. The trust has directors Cheran and N. Lingusamy as well as social activist S.  Udhaymoorthy as leading members. .

Surya's ambition is to make the film - featuring mostly new faces - entirely with money raised from the public.

A total of 160,000 college students are to undertake a campaign to sell tickets for the film. Each ticket costs Rs 10. 

Surya says that, since 1991, he has wanted to make a film on the Cauvery farmers' plight. That was when he first saw newspaper pictures of riots between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu farmers over the Cauvery water.

He says he wants to depict a "realistic and true picture of the Cauvery farmer".

"The film will neither be a art film, nor a commercial film", he says. It will not have singing and dancing around the trees and comedy tracks.

The trust has a website - www.pachaimanithan.com -  to provide information about the film as well as the issue it deals with.

Surya is, however, not the first South Indian filmmaker to collect funds for the public for a film project.

Twenty years ago, Malayalam filmmaker John Abraham made "Amma Ariyan" by raising funds in a similar manner.

"The dry bed of the Cauvery river symbolizes erosion of human values", says Surya.