It might have once been considered as 'unfilm-able', yet The Life of Pi is the latest film to hit the silver screen, with director Ang Lee hoping to make the impossible not just possible, but a cinematic journey that won't be forgotten.

The new film opened up the New York Film Festival last night, and is the screen adaptation of the acclaimed Yann Martel novel of the same name about a boy named Pi who recalls the time was shipwrecked, leaving him and a small collective of animals led by a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, a spotted hyena, an injured zebra, and an orang-utan to survive their perilous journey to safety in the confines of small lifeboat. The film is renowned for it's deep spiritual underlining, something that drew Lee to the project in the first place as it was something that the Oscar-winning director wanted to display for a much wider audience.

Lee also said, revealing to reporters on standby at the film's opening, that he knew the only way he could transfer the spectacle from page to picture was by shooting it in 3D and that this had been his ambition sometime before James Cameron's Avatar.

Whilst Ang is looking to take top plaudits at the film fest., he faces stiff competition form a number of other picture set to debut in the Big Apple during the upcoming week. Michael Haneke's Palme d'Or winning Amour will be shown at the festival as willBeyond the Hills by Romanian director Cristian Mungiu and Noah Baumbach's black-and-white New York love song, Frances Ha.