Festival Director S M Khan received confirmation that Pinto will be here for the India premier of Woody Allen’s You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger in which the actress plays the love interest of Josh Brolin. The film, a characteristic Allen exploration of personal relationships also stars Anthony Hopkins and Naomi Watts.
Out of India, the beautiful 26-year-old Mangalorean has managed to keep herself constantly in the media glare. More recently, director Julian Schnabel’s decision to cast the Indian model to play a Palestinian woman in his new movie Miral has drawn some criticism. Pinto herself is unfazed by all the negative attention. She also plans to play an Arabian princess in Jean-Jacques Annaud’s Black Gold.
Preceding Pinto on the red carpet at Tuesday’s festival opening will be actors Ajay Devgun and Madhuri Dikshit.
This year’s film festival which seems to have steered clear of Bollywood hype has an interesting line-up of world class films with a strong focus on Polish and Mexican cinema. The Polish magic realism master Jan Jakub Kolski who is being accorded an eight-film retrospective is also expected at the festival.
The international competition section drew a record 450 entries because of the big spike in the prize money. Fifteen films from different countries have been selected for this section apart from three Indian entries.
The international jury is being headed by Polish filmmaker Jerry Antczak. The other members are Oscar-nominated Canadian director Sturla Gunnarson who made Such a Long Journey, Australian comic Mick Molloy, French film critic Olivier Pere and actress Revathy Menon.