Yama Rahimi

Outrageously funny and insightful, Liz Mermin's documentary explores the make-up of Bollywood filmmaking by sampling it on the set of "Shootout at Lokhandwala" with the real incident on which the film is based and the real life court drama of a Bollywood star undergoes.

Christina Marouda: I came up with the idea of starting an Indian Film Festival in Los Angeles six and half years ago since this is our 6th year because I worked with couple of International film festivals and my background was marketing and distributing films as well as programming films. I realized that there wasn't a platform for Indian films. You would see one or two films that were shown at some festivals every other year but even that in my opinion wasn't a representation of the country had to offer. Since I had an interest in India anyway, I thought there was a niche but I did my research and found there was an Indian community here. Also that year LAGAAN had been nominated for an Academy Award as a best foreign film and MONSOON WEDDING was coming out. Also there was this huge interest in Yoga and spiritualism in LA, so all these elements made me realize that there was a platform for this festival and only a question of time before India would be on everybody's radar. Now six years later all the studios are looking at India for local and co-productions. It would have been difficult for us now to establish ourselves when everybody is already interested because we wouldn't have been ready for the attention, so it took us to establish our vision and now we are ready for the attention.

I think the characters are tailor made for both of you that's hard to imagine with other actors. Sometimes when a film is cast any actor could be cast but in this case it had a lot texture that was based on your characters.

There's no sophomore slouch for actor turned writer and director Tom McCarthy. After The Station Agent, he returns with a mature and complex tale lined with rich performances from veteran actors Richard Jenkins and the internationally renowned Hiam Abbass who makes her U.S. film acting debut. The story about a lonely professor whose path is crossed with several immigrant inhabitants of the culturally diverse New York city is both original and an involving film that that stimulates the senses.

With a well-cast and gorgeous setting in the the idyllic world famous Emmental, the Swiss entry for the Academy Awards Foreign Film consideration is a crowd pleaser with a winning formula à la Chocolat or television's Golden Girls.