Balaji Motion Pictures and Alt Entertainment’s Shorr had its US premiere to a standing ovation at the Tenth Annual Mahindra Indo-American Arts Council (MIAAC) Film Festival in New York.
The opening night screening kicked off with a red carpet followed by pre-screening cocktails, and leading up to the screening at the SVA Silas Theatre in midtown Manhattan. It concluded with a round of question and answers with the actors and filmmakers.
Earlier in the day, the producers organized an extensive one-on-one media interaction with filmmaker Ekta Kapoor, and actors Sendhil Ramamurthy and Tusshar Kapoor, who are part of the wide ensemble cast of Shorr. Later, key South Asian media informally interacted with the cast and crew over lunch.
The premiere was attended by Ekta Kapoor, Balaji Motion Pictures CEO Tanuj Garg, director-duo Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK (Flavours, 99), actors Tusshar Kapoor, and Sendhil Ramamurthy (of the hit TV series Heroes and Covert Affairs fame). Also in attendance were Mira Nair, Nandana Sen, Padma Lakshmi, Sarita Choudhury, Deepti Naval, Tannishtha Chatterjee, and Rahul Bose, among others.
The feature film version of the winner of MIAAC 2008’s Best Short Film Award, Shorr is a gritty, funny composite portrait of Mumbai. Inspired from various daily newspaper stories, Shorr revolves around three interconnected stories set during the popular and chaotic Ganpati festival in Mumbai: An expatriate returns home to an unwelcoming city. A bootlegger of bestsellers and his buddies find a bag of explosives. And a young cricketer must find the money to pay up to get into a cricket team.
Shorr is a production of Alt Entertainment, a sister brand of Balaji Motion Pictures, which released the runaway hit, Love, Sex Aur Dhokha, earlier this year.
A special festival cut of Shorr was shown at MIAAC, as the final theatrical cut will be ready before its anticipated release in March-April 2011.
Recently, Shorr garnered rave reviews at the prestigious Pusan Film Festival in South Korea, where it was officially invited in the festival’s Asian showcase.
