New Delhi  - Slumdog Millionaire, the Mumbai-based rags-to- riches story, is being billed as the breakthrough film that announces Indian cinema's arrival on the international stage despite being directed and produced by Britons and having spawned a national debate on the portrayal of poverty in India.

The film is set for Oscar glory, with ten nominations at the 81st Academy Awards on Sunday in Los Angeles. It has already won numerous awards, including four Golden Globes.

Directed by Danny Boyle and scripted by Simon Beaufoy, Slumdog Millionaire is, in many ways, a British-Indian production.

It is based on Q and A, a novel by Indian diplomat and writer Vikas Swarup, and tells the tale of an orphan from a Mumbai slum who hits the jackpot in the final of the Indian game show, Who Wants to be a Millionaire. It has an Indian cast and crew and music by Indian maestro AR Rahman. The lead actor Dev Patel is British-Indian.

But its reception in India has been somewhat mixed and it earned its share of criticism even before its release there on January 23. Slumdog was assailed by sections of the media and film fraternity as "poverty porn" that entertained affluent Western audiences with a grim and voyeuristic view of slum life.

"I saw the film with a mixed audience at the Toronto film festival. The Westerners loved it. All the Indians hated it," said Priyadarshan, a top director in Bollywood, the prolific Hindi language film industry based in Mumbai.

"The West loves to see us as a wasteland, filled with horror stories of exploitation and degradation. But is that all there is to our beautiful city Mumbai?" he told IANS news agency.

Amitabh Bachchan, the country's most famous actor, stoked the controversy when he wrote in his blog: "If SM (Slumdog Millionaire) projects India as Third World dirty underbelly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky underbelly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations."

Boyle and Beaufoy were in India for the premiere and insisted their film was not about poverty, but rather about the grit and spirit of Mumbai, a city that attracts tens of thousands of migrants from rural India - all hoping for a better life.

Shirin Vakil Miller, director of non-profit Save the Children, felt the film did not glamourize poverty but reflected the reality of the lives of millions of Indian children.

"In cities across India, children work in terrible conditions for a pittance, are subject to violence and abuse or captured by organized crime (gangs) who make them beg for money on the streets," she said.

"We hope that with Slumdog Millionaire's nominations, the world will acknowledge the cold reality of 120 million children living in poverty in India and work with us to tackle the injustice."

Author Swarup said he believed that all stories of India, negative and positive, needed to be told. For him, the protagonist of his novel is the ultimate underdog - but one who lives, survives and hopes.

"The movie is, at its heart, about aspiration, and about dreams coming true. This 'common man' Jamal (the film's protagonist) is both hopeful and relentless, defiant and proud of his origins even as the people around him call him a 'slumdog'. He knows better - that it doesn't matter where you come from, only where you are headed," said Nandan Nilekani, co-chairman of Indian information technology giant Infosys.

Boyle has said that in Slumdog he wanted to tell a story that was rooted in reality but talked about hope and had the feel of a fairytale.

For Indian filmgoers, who've grown up with the fairytales dished out by Bollywood, Slumdog is a crossover film that they seem finally ready to accept with all its "dark bits," as Swarup calls them.

Bollywood star Anil Kapoor, who plays the game show host in the film, is certain that Slumdog, whether it wins an Oscar or not, is the platform on which Indian cinema has announced its arrival on the world stage.

"It is a turning point in Indian cinema. Now everyone knows who AR Rahman is and the people connected with the film ... Today a film with Indian actors and an Indian story has achieved world recognition," Kapoor said recently. (dpa)