MUMBAI: In a press conference held in Delhi IIFA Brand Ambassador Amitabh Bachchan announced that a lot of new features had been added to the IIFA weekend which will be held in Yorkshire from 7 to 10 June.
Apart from premieres of new films and the Business Forum meet which is now an inherent part of every IIFA award event, this year’s event will also see a friendly cricket match between an IIFA XI and a Yorkshire XI.
Captained by Saif Ali Khan, the IIFA XI will include Kapil Dev, Ajay Judeja, Mohammed Azharuddin, Rakyesh Mehra, Shaan, Emraan Hashmi, Sohail Khan, Dino Morea, Fardeen Khan, Sunny Deol, Bobby Deol, Aftab Shivdasani, Tushar Kapoor, Arshad Warsi, Abhishek Bachchan, Hrithik Roshan, Kunal Kapoor, Ritiesh Deshmukh and others. Chunkey Pandey and Boman Irani will be the commentators with Preity Zinta and Urmila Matondkar joining them, and Shilpa Shetty and Salman Khan will join Amitabh at the toss of the coin. The Yorkshire team will include the renowned umpire Dickie Bird and players like Robin Smith, Devon Malcolm, and Shahid Malik.
In addition, this year’s IIFA is going green by joining hands with a movement against global warming known as Global Cool.
Former FICCI President Y K Modi announced that a sixty-member business delegation will go to Yorkshire for the IIFA Global Business Forum where subjects like entertainment, clean energy, making India a manufacturing hub for British goods and collaboration in information and communication technologies would be discussed. Indian participants will include the Civil Aviation Minister Prafulla Patel apart from FICCI President Habil Khorakiwala and Lord Karan Billimoria who is Chairman of the Indo-British Partnership Network.
The premieres this year will include Colours of Sacrifice which is a shortened English version of the Aamir Khan starrer Rang De Basanti directed by Rakyesh Mehra. A media museum would also be opened in Leeds on Bollywood. There will be a BAFTA-IIFA Workshop in Bradford during the week, with a special session on Reliving the Magic of Satyajit Ray.
