MUMBAI: Jagmohan Mundhra’s Provoked was the opening film at the fifth annual Los Angeles Indian Film Festival on 17 April 2007.

Among those who attended the screening were the film’s actors Nandita Das, who played the social worker working tirelessly to free the abused Punjabi wife played by Aishwarya Rai, and English actor Nicolas Irons, who played the constable who perjured himself on the stand so that the prosecution could obtain a conviction.

Prior to the screening of the film, Mundhra told the audience that he was quite pleased to have Rai, Bollywood’s leading female actor, and Das, a premiere actor in many of India’s more artistic films, together in the same movie dealing with a controversial theme based on a true story.

Mudhra also noted that Kiranjit Ahluwalia, on whose life and tragic circumstances he based the film, was unable to attend the Los Angeles screening of the film because she now works as a postal worker in England and was not able to get any work days off, although she had attended the London premiere. He did make a vow, however, to bring her to the United States when the film opens in theatres in May.

Lead Aishwarya Rai however, was unable to attend the screening due to her impending wedding in Mumbai this week, reports www.Hollywood.tv founder Sheeraz Hasan.

The six day long film festival is also featuring Muhdhra’s 1985 film Kamla, in which Deepti Naval played a tribal slave girl who is brought to the city by a manipulative news reporter looking to prove the existence of the flesh trade in modern India. Her story creates ripples in the capital, upsetting the reporter’s life.