MUMBAI: Loins of Punjab Presents, directed by Manish Acharya, will be premiered at the opening night of the 2007 South Asian International Film (SAIF) Festival. The festival will be held from 3-9 October, 2007 in New York City.

The film is slated for release in India on 21 September by PVR.

The SAIF festival will open with Acharya’s Loins of Punjab Presents at Loews Cineplex in Lincoln Square on 3 October, 2007.  Walking the red carpet will be the full cast and crew including, Shabana Azmi and Ajay Naidu.

The film is 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. 

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. 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 to have the ‘perfect’ audience for this film for its American debut, and that is why I am so excited about having its North American premiere at SAIF Festival,” says Acharya.

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.

“We are excited to kick off the week long event with such an entertaining film that our audience will really enjoy and relate to. 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,” said SAIF Festival director Manjri Srivastava.