Many people have told director Mira Nair how her buoyant tale Monsoon Wedding lifted their spirits and put a spring in their step as they left the theatre one morning five years ago at the Toronto International Film Festival.

They emerged to news of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, and had to play catch-up on the horrors that had unfolded while they watched Nair's colourful, big-hearted film about the clash of tradition and modern times during preparations for a Punjabi wedding in India.

"What I've heard from people is that they saw a movie that made them so much believe in life, and they came out to find that life as they knew it was no longer, in a way," Nair said at this year's Toronto festival, where her new movie, The Namesake, had its first screening on Monday on the five-year anniversary of September 11.

That Monsoon Wedding screening for reporters and movie-industry executives the morning of the attacks preceded that night's big premiere of the film, which was cancelled along with other festival events.

The studio and filmmakers went ahead with a scheduled party for the film, not as a celebration but as a way to bond and console one another.

"People actually longed for a place to go to be together," said the 48-year-old Nair, whose films include Vanity Fair with Reese Witherspoon and Mississippi Masala with Denzel Washington.

"It wasn't like a dancing, rock 'n' roll thing. It was a quiet affair, but at least we were together. There was this great need to be together with people you know and love, and even if you don't know and love them, there was a need to be together in a room. Because there was a just genuine confusion. No one had any idea what would happen next."

Nair returned to the Toronto festival a year later as one of the directors of "September 11," a collection of short films about and inspired by the attacks.

In the meantime, Monsoon Wedding had debuted in theatres, and Nair said she found it helped soothe some of the unease and misunderstanding Americans felt about the communities of foreigners in their midst.

"There was a lot of dialogue at that time, there was so much talk in the newspapers about people like me and us being `the other,' the unknown attackers, the question mark," Nair said.