Hindi
Sixth Jagran Film Festival to open with ‘Masaan’
MUMBAI: With India’s high profile entry in Cannes Film Festival Masaan directed by Neeraj Ghaywan and starring Sanjay Mishra, Richa Chaddha and Shweta Tiwary, the sixth edition of Jagran Film Festival is ready to take off starting 1 July.
Winner of two prestigious awards the FIPRESCI, International Jury of Film Critics prize and Promising Future prize in the Un Certain Regard section, Masaan has received wide critical acclaim globally.
While Variety’s Jay Weissberg writes, “A ‘Promising Future’ prize in Cannes should help this narratively challenged drama of two families trapped in the strictures of India’s rigid caste system.”
Hollywood Reporter’s Deborsh Young describes it as “India’s modern and traditional sides face off in two interlocking love stories.”
A collaborative effort of Phantom Films, Drishyam, Macassar Productions, Pathe, Sikhya Entertainment and Arte Cinema, France, Masaan will be presented on 1 July, 2015 evening by Ghaywan and the star cast of the film to the festival delegates personally.
Cannes Film Festival’s strategic consultant Manoj Srivastava said, “It’s a matter of pride to open the festival with such a prestigious and worthy film. Masaan is just the beginning; the festival has a lot in store for film delegates this year which would be revealed over the next few days.”
The Film Festival begins in New Delhi’s Siri Fort Auditoria and will present a wide ranging Indian and foreign cinema with specially curated sections on thematic lines. Masaan an official entry in the Festival will compete for the Indian Showcase Awards.
Hindi
Remembering Gyan Sahay, the lens behind film, television and advertising
From a puppet rabbit selling poppadums to Hindi cinema, he framed it all.
MUMBAI: There are careers, and then there are canvases. Gyan Sahay, the veteran cinematographer, director, and producer who passed away on 10 March 2026 in Mumbai, had one of the latter. Over several decades in the Indian film and television industry, he turned lenses, lights, and the occasional puppet rabbit into something approaching art.
A graduate of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune, Sahay built his reputation as a director of photography across a career that stretched from the early 1970s all the way to the digital age. He was the kind of craftsman who understood that a well-composed shot is not merely a technical achievement but a quiet act of storytelling.
For most Indians of a certain age, however, Sahay will forever be the man behind the rabbit. His direction of the iconic long-running television commercial for Lijjat Papad, featuring its now-legendary puppet bunny, gave the country one of its most cheerfully persistent advertising images. It was the sort of work that sneaks into the national subconscious and takes up permanent residence.
His big-screen credits as cinematographer include Anokhi Pehchan (1972), Pagli (1974), Pas de Deux (1981), and Hum Farishte Nahin (1988). In 1999, he stepped behind a different kind of camera altogether, making his directorial debut with Sar Ankhon Par, a drama that featured Vikas Bhalla and Shruti Ulfat, with a cameo by Shah Rukh Khan for good measure.
On television, Sahay was particularly prized for his command of multi-camera production setups, a skill that made him a go-to technician for large-scale shows and reality programmes. In an industry that has never been especially patient with complexity, he was the calm hand on the rig.
In later life, Sahay turned teacher. He participated regularly in masterclasses and Digi-Talks, often hosted by organisations such as Bharatiya Chitra Sadhna, sharing hard-won wisdom on cinematography, the comedy of timing in a shot, and the sweeping changes brought by the shift from celluloid to digital. He was also said to have been involved in a project concerning a biographical film on Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy.
Tributes from the film industry poured in following the news of his passing, with colleagues remembering him as a senior cameraman who served as a rare bridge between two entirely different eras of Indian cinema. That is, perhaps, the finest thing one can say of any craftsman: he kept up, and he brought others along with him.
