Avantika Hari

Avantika Hari was born in India, brought up in the Middle East and educated in the US and UK. She graduated with a double major in Digital Arts and Economics from Stetson University Florida in 2002 and then managed her own multimedia consulting firm while studying Creative Writing and Filmmaking at Stanford University in California. Hari won the Commonwealth Vision Award presented by HRH Prince Edward in 2006 for her short film "Hat Day". Hari is a multi award winning writer and director of the English feature Land Gold Women (2011). The film is the world’s first English language feature to explore the issue of honour killing, and was released in India in conjunction with the Movement to End Honour Violence. Avantika was the creative director, and the film was produced by A Richer Lens.

Avantika has created content for a variety of media, including radio (a 60 episode series about a newly married couple called “Sahil and Suchitra”), internet (“Dream for a Moment: Create Utopia”, which is an interactive web based art project), and video, including corporate videos for some of Dubai’s biggest companies and a variety of video art pieces.

Land Gold Women is her first feature film. Avantika wrote the story of LGW, while doing her MA in Filmmaking at the London Film School in 2004. Her education and upbringing in different parts of the globe helped tremendously in crafting a story that weighed both Eastern and Western sensibilities.

Land Gold Women has won India’s National Award 2010 for Best Feature Film in English, the Foreign Correspondent Association’s Purple Orchid Award for Best Film and the Best Script/Screenplay Award at the Asian Festival of First Films in 2009 and the Royal Reel Award for Excellence in Filmmaking at the Canada International Film Festival 2010. It won the Best of Show Award at The Indie Fest, USA and won three awards at the ReelHeart International Film Festival held in Toronto. The awards were, Best Film (Runner up), Best Actor and Best Cinematography.

After premiering in the Indian Panorama section of the International Film Festival of Goa in 2009 which screens 26 of the best films made by Indians in any given year, the film has received numerous nominations in various categories at International film festivals. The soundtrack of the film was nominated for an award at the East End Film Festival in 2010. The film also received a nomination for Best UK Feature for Avantika at the Festival.

Avantika now runs A Richer Lens with her husband, Vivek Agrawal. She is soon to direct her second feature.