South Asian International Film Fest opener selected

The 2007 South Asian International Film Festival will be held from October 3-9, 2007 in New York City.

The festival will open with Manish Acharya's LOINS OF PUNJAB PRESENTS at Loews Cineplex in Lincoln Square on October 3, 2007. Walking the red carpet will be the full cast and crew including, Shabana Azmi and Ajay Naidu. A film set over three days, in Edison, New Jersey, where five Indian-Americans and one Jewish Indophile participate in the first DESI IDOL, a Bollywood-style singing contest sponsored by a pork millionaire. For seventy-two hours, armed with a song, these seven strangers are going to war.

"We are excited to kick off the week long event with such an entertaining film that our audience will really enjoy and relate to,"
said Manjri Srivastava, SAIFF's Festival Director. " It is SAIFF's continuing mission to discover and promote up and coming independent South Asian filmmakers and we believe Writer-Director Manish Acharya is one to watch in the future."

Manish Acharya is a multiple award winner filmmaker from the NYU Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Film program. "Indie filmmaking is like running a marathon," he says. "All the blood, sweat and tears are completely worth it when watching the film with an appreciative audience. I know how important it is for us have the 'perfect'
audience for this film for its American debut, and that is why I am so excited about having its premiere here at SAIFF." LOINS OF PUNJAB PRESENTS was presented the Dennis Riese Award by NYU faculty, and won the Best Feature Film award at the 65th Annual First Run Film Festival.

For more information about SAIFF 2007 please log on to www.saiff.org.