Hindi
Punjabi film What The Jatt set for release
NEW DELHI: ‘I took up this film because of my love for the Punjabi language and the beautiful script. If French and Spanish movies can be termed as world cinema, why can our movies not have the same status internationally, especially when there is a strong presence of Indian diaspora all over the world?” said producer Saket Behl on the eve of the release of his film What The Jatt!!
He added that the film deals with a global subject. “’I promise the audience a good experience in the theatres as my film is a complete family entertainer.’
Although What The Jatt!! is Behl’s first Punjabi film, he is not new to the field and has many prestigious feats under his belt.
The highlights of his career range from producing the highly acclaimed Hindi feature film Dhoop to launching Anurag Kashyap as a director with Last Train to Mahakali, a television film that won many awards. Behl also partnered Aditya Chopra on Yash Raj’s ambitious TV project Powder.
“I have hands down production experience as well as creative knowledge for I have worked with immensely talented names like Aditya Chopra, Sriram Raghavan, Anurag Kashyap and Shivam Nair as a producer,” he said.
What The Jatt!! stars Harish Verma, Binnu Dhillion, BN Sharma, Vipul Roy and Isha Rekki .The film was shot in one schedule in 24 days in Punjab, thanks to the strong pre-production and a hands down creative crew, Behl said.
Behl is now working on the release of his Hindi film 27.
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.
