Indian director Mira Nair is heading up the festival jury, fresh from winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival for Monsoon Wedding.

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The director, Mira Nair, introduces viewers to a milieu in which Indians practice their bright-hued rituals while competing with whites in the motel trade and keeping a friendly distance from blacks.

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Among the eminent Indians who have signed up is VS Naipaul, the Nobel prize-winning novelist, Mira Nair, the award-winning director of Monsoon Wedding, and Khushwant Singh, the famous Indian writer and columnist.

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Other films have already been seen on the festival circuit at Sundance, Cannes, Venice and Toronto - such as Michael Haneke's Cannes Palme d'Or winner Amour, Thomas Vinterberg's The Hunt and Mira Nair's The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

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Other entries at Tribeca include films from Neil LaBute (the domestic drama "Some Velvet Morning, " starring Stanley Tucci), Mira Nair (the best-seller adaptation "The Reluctant Fundamentalist, " with Kate Hudson) and Neil Jordan (the vampire tale "Byzantium, " with Saoirse Ronan).

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In fact, the manic pace of the film precludes sustained meditation on Jamal's urban surroundings--the kind of revelations that arise from the languorous long takes of a realist filmmaker like Satyajit Ray or, to a lesser extent, Mira Nair (for example, in 1988's Salaam Bombay).

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Also notable are new films from art-house directors such as Richard Linklater ("Before Midnight, " which reunites stars Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke), Neil LaBute ("Some Velvet Morning"), David Gordon Green ("Prince Avalanche, " with Mr. Rudd and Emile Hirsch), Mira Nair ("The Reluctant Fundamentalist") and Neil Jordan ("Byzantium").

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