Thai-American filmmaker Smith Timsawat makes his directorial debut with PROVINCE 77, an innovative blend of ghetto drama and immigrant saga that plays out like a Thai version of BOYZ N THE HOOD. Pete (Pete Thongchua) is a restless urban youth living with his immigrant family in the predominantly Thai section of Los Angeles known as Province 77. Frustrated with his father´s slow progress with the American Dream, Pete befriends a vicious gang leader and soon finds himself drawn into a lucrative but high-stakes underworld of sex, drugs, and violent crime that inexorably exacts its deadly price. Earning authentic street cred with high-octane gunfight and drag-racing sequences set to a gangsta rap soundtrack, PROVINCE 77 is a hardhitting action drama that, like its Korean counterpart BETTER LUCK TOMORROW, heralds the arrival of an exciting new genre in Asian-American cinema.