Hindi
Asian films to dominate Venice Filmfest this year
NEW DELHI: Asian films including one from India will dominate the 71st Venice International Film Festival next month.
The Festival is being held from 27 August to 6 September.
The competition section includes two Asian films: Tsukamoto Shinya’s Nobi and Wang Xiaoshua’s thriller Red Amnesia.
The former is the story of a soldier struggling for survival in the Filipino jungle during the Pacific War. Ooka Shohei’s novel was previously adapted by Ichikawa Kon as Fires on the Plain (1959). In addition to directing, writing, editing, producing and serving as cinematographer, Tsukamoto also stars opposite Lily Franky and Nakamura Tatsuya.
A thriller about a retired widow whose life is changed after receiving anonymous calls from a mysterious stranger, Red Amnesia is Wang’s first film in three years since his autobiographical drama 11 Flowers (2011).
The Orizzonti competition section includes two Asian feature films: Hong Sang-soo’s Hill of Freedom and Chaitanya Tamhane’s Court. The former stars Kase Ryo as a Japanese man who falls for an older woman in Seoul. The latter chronicles a controversial court case about a folk singer accused of performing an inflammatory song that drove a man to commit suicide.
Ann Hui, director of the festival closing film The Golden Era, is serving as the director of the Orizzonti competition jury.
The section also includes 13-minute China short Great Heat and 17-minute Indonesia short Maryam.
The festival is also hosting the world premieres of Peter Chan’s Dearest and IM Kwon-taek’s Make Up as out of competition screening.
Organisers of the Venice Days sidebar said in addition to Kim Ki-duk’s One on One as opening film, the programme includes Bengali-language recession-set drama Asha jaoar majhe (aka Labour of Love) by Aditya Vikram Sengupta.
Independently organised by the SNCCI (Sindacato Nazionale Critici Cinematografici Italiani), the International Critics’ Week includes Vietnam’s Flapping in the Middle of Nowhere, and China’s The Coffin in the Mountain.
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.
