On the sidelines of IFFI, UTV's Ronnie Screwvala and director Anurag Basu chose a muggy Sunday afternoon and the Panaji Kala Academy's open-air amphitheatre to unveil their next film "Metro".

The jam-packed press conference was attended by three of the film's stars - Shilpa Shetty, Shiney Ahuja and Kangana Ranaut. Konkona Sensharma and Kay Kay Menon are also in the cast. The stars arrived fashionably late, but the glamour-struck media sweated it out and stayed on to get their sound bytes.

They did get what they were looking for, and not all of it was a wasted effort. Shilpa described "Metro", scheduled for release in February next year, as a realistic film with a strong commercial foundation. Anurag Basu, whose last film "Gangster" was a sleeper hit, has obviously moved on to bigger things professionally - he has made a career leap from the Mahesh Bhatt camp to UTV Motion Pictures.

"Metro," he said, "is essentially about a celebration of life. It is about the little joys that we often fail to make the most of in our pursuit of bigger goals."

--- IANS