"Dharm" to close South Asian International Film Festival Announces

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

The festival will close with Bhavna Talwar's directorial debut DHARM at Loews Cineplex in Lincoln Square on October 9, 2007. Set in the oldest and holiest city of India, Varanasi, Pundit Ram Narayan Chaturvedi is a Hindu Brahmin priest who lives by his belief in the 'true Hindu way of life'. One day an abandoned infant comes into the Priest's life and home. He adopts the child and through the years the child fills the Priest's life with joy and laughter until the day he learns that child is a Muslim. Can this four-year-old child challenge four thousand years of religion?

First time Director Bhavna Talwar is a former journalist and advertising producer who took on the ambitious topic of religious fanaticism and caste conflicts for her first feature film. "It's a film that transcends the borders of geographies and leaves people with a thought and message – something that not very many films can claim
today," she said. She has received critical acclaim from the closing
night of the World Cinema of India presentation at the 2007 Cannes film festival to being one of five directors nominated for the prestigious GUCCI award at the 2007 Venice Film Festival.

" We are honored to present the first project of such a highly acclaimed woman director and we look forward to her upcoming projects like the production she is working on with Oscar nominated actress Joan Allen," said Festival Director, Manjri Srivastava.

Produced by WSG Pictures and the Friday Fund, DHARM is internationally represented by Film Distribution, France.