MUMBAI: Mira Nair’s latest film The Reluctant Fundamentalist opened the 69th Venice Film Festival. The movie was applauded with a standing ovation.

When Nair was asked as to what inspires her as a creative person, she said, “There is one film that has inspired me for decades—the only film in the world I wished I had directed, a path breaking film that taught me to show both sides of a conflict with equal intelligence, pain and love. This is Gillo Pontecorvo’s great classic about the fight for Algerian Independence: The Battle of Algiers.”

Incidentally, after the screening of the movie, Pontecorvo’s widow sought Nair out and said, “I am Gillo Pontecorvo’s widow, and I have come to tell you that Gillo lives in you.”

Mira Nair’s film will release in India on 17 May. The motion picture is a touching and engaging story of a young man chasing corporate success on Wall Street. Post September 2011 tragedy in America, he finds himself embroiled in a conflict between his american dream, a hostage crisis, and the enduring call of his family‘s homeland.

The film stars Kate Hudson, Kiefer Sutherland, Liev Schreiber, Riz Ahmed, Shabana Azmi and Om Puri.