Ainy Jaffri – “We don’t believe in politics”, as she talks about working on India film Coke and co-compering the Asian Achievers Awards 2023 (video interview)

STAR Ainy Jaffri talked to www.asianculturevulture.com about her co-compering the Asian Achievers Awards this year with fellow actor Nitin Ganatra; and her forthcoming film and TV work.

For the first time, she features in an Indian film production shot in the UK.

The film, ‘Coke’ was mostly shot in the UK and also stars Siddhanth Kapoor and is directed and written by Sarim Momin (writer of ‘Khabees’)

While she shot that earlier in the summer, she also appears in a Pakistani TV production called ‘Mandi’ alongside some other big names from there.

In the video, she discusses why she responded to the call for her to work on ‘Coke’ and sets out her stall for future work.

Now based in the UK, she wants do work with production houses from anywhere in the world, and is keen to extend her acting repertoire. She has also done theatre table readings and told acv, she loved acting.

She got into it at a young age and was always in school productions and maintained an interest in it alongside her academic education and living in several different countries while growing up.

She actually lived and worked in Canada and gained citizenship there after studying marketing & business there as a post-graduate.

She is balancing her career aspirations with a young family – her son is just four and she took a break from acting work soon after his birth.

You can hear her talk about all these subjects in our short interview.

She will co-compere the Asian Achievers Awards (AAA) next Friday (September 15) with Nitin Ganatra. The actor probably best known for his stint in ‘Eastenders’ and remains one of the most versatile and talented creative spirits in Britain today and he has presented the AAAs before.

There are 10 awards to be presented on the evening. These are Arts and Culture; Business Person of the Year; Community; Entrepreneur of the Year, Lifetime Achievement Awards; Media; Professional of the Year; Sports Personality of the Year; Uniformed And Civil Service; and Woman of The Year.

Among the nominees for the Art and Culture award are dancer and choreographer Archana Kumar; composer and sitar player Jasdeep Singh Degun, who spoke to acv about ‘Orpheus Re-imagined’ an Opera North production that saw Indian classical singers work with a full orchestra on a classical European work; filmmaker and activist Pratibha Parmer – whose latest feature work, ‘My Name is Andrea’ is a hybrid docu-drama with actors Ashley Judd, Andrea Riseborough, Amandla Stenberg, Christine Lahti and Soko in it. The film is about radical feminist Andrea Dworkin and it received rave reviews when it had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival last year; and Shubham Saraf, an actor whose rising status was confirmed by starring in one of the biggest theatre productions of last year, ‘The Father and the Assassin’ and then playing one of the pivotal characters in the Apple TV drama, ‘Shantaram’ alongside star Charlie Hunnam. Saraf spoke to acv about his role.

In the Media category, the nominees are Guardian columnist Aditya Chakrabortty; ITV journalist Anila Dhami, who in her early days of journalism wrote a piece for us; Rubina Pabani and Poppy Jay from ‘The Brown Girls Do It Too’ podcast and stage show; and journalist Shamim Chowdhury.

Among the judges this year are Aseem Rafiq, the former cricketer who highlighted racism in the game; Shamil Thakrar, co-founder of restaurant chain, Dishoom; Mohammed Amin, chair for the National Muslim War Memorial Trust; Farzana Baudel, CEO and co-founder of Curzon PR and Mike Reed, chair Police Federation, City of London.

The AAAs were originally created by CB Patel and his newspaper group which published Gujarat Samachar and the English language, Asian Voice.

In 2021, the AAAs were taken over by Pratik Dattani and his global business advisory firm, EPG.

For more see: https://asianachieversawards.com/

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