Beach Fashion Week launched at 11th #BNHAF Awards and Festival

Cannes Film Festival closed on May 27 this year and the 11th #BNHAF Awards and Festival kicked off the same day, “reason being, I wanted filmmakers and creatives worldwide to continue and enjoy the festival fervor that Cannes kicks off wee-bit longer”, chuckled Amit R Agarwal, Artistic Director #BNHAF Awards and Festival that saw Chennai based actor, Mekha Rajan winning Best Actress Award for her poignant portrayal in Dwija directed by Akshat Gangrade.

The new feature at the 11th Edition was introduction of screening rooms, Gauravi, a regular at the festival said that just like Cannes Film Festival screens the short films in a screening room, she finds this initiative at #BNHAF very festival-friendly, as she has now got the power to choose what film she wants to watch at her choice of day and time.

Vedant another festival regular said that he really liked the short films created by children to raise consciousness about socially relevant topics like garbage collection and cleanliness.

With films from more than 15 countries, Agarwal was ecstatic that the festival is growing leaps and bounds – international filmmakers and artists are choosing the festival to have a ‘World Premiere’ of their films – how many festivals in the world can claim it in mere 11 Editions?

Best Actor Award was given to Fortunato Benigni from Italy, while best film was bagged by ‘El Corpo’ from Spain that talks about a very burning social-issue body shaming. Best Director was won by a female director, Kashvi Nihar, finishing her filmmaking course at a University In Delhi. She made a very subtle film on smoking and how it kills slowly but surely!

Amit R Agarwal also announced the launch of Beach Fashion Week. Rekha Vohraa of Rekhaa Vohraa Foundation and Honorary Board Member of BFW said, “Amit got the idea when he was invited to New York Fashion Week in February 2023. When he came back he bounced the idea and we realized it was high time a credible fashion week is created in the Indian space”.

Agarwal said that Beach Fashion Week Season 1 is unique as it is a tri-continent property, taking place in Asia, Europe and Australia. Another first is that the Fashion week is in hybrid format. Models and aspiring models that can’t compete in person can compete by sending in their videos that imbibe the essence of Beach Fashion. Top-winner get to walk at the fashion-shows co-produced by Popcorn Flicks at the New York Fashion Week complete with Billboard appearance at the Times Square.

All participants get to model in digital-videos of partner brands and scale-up their model-profile. Today in this IG age when anybody and everybody creates a model-page, my idea is to give true value-addition to a model, to shine in true sense across the world!