On an unusually warm and humid autumn evening, a wave of film folk arrived at the SVA theater on West 23rd street for the opening of the 2010 South Asian International Film Festival.

The man of the night was director Anurag Kashyap, here to present his latest: That Girl in Yellow Boots.

While posing for pictures, he ran into NYC-based actor and musician Samrat Chakrabarti, hot off his debut this week in HBO’s latest season of In Treatment (as the son of Irrfan Khan).

Loins of Punjab Presents alum Seema Rahmani and Manu Narayan were there, along with Sudhish Kamath, who has directed them in his Good Night, Good Morning, a film about long-distance love in the digital age.

The festival has garnered more media coverage than I recall seeing last year or the one before that, with stories appearing in the Village Voice, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and on WNYC radio.

Beyond the opening night selection, several other films have arrived with buzz surrounding them, for a variety of reasons: Harud, Paan Singh Tomar, Slackistan, West is West and Gandu.

The festival runs through next Tuesday night, November 2nd.   Ticket info here.