Hindi
Dev Benegal wins at Hong Kong Film Bazaar
NEW DELHI: Dev Benegal’s Dead, End has won the the Network of Asian Fantastic Films (NAFF) prize at this year’s Hong Kong Asia Film Financing Forum (HAF) awards.
Network of Asian Fantastic Films (NAFF) prize is sponsored by the Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival (PiFan).
Benegal’s film is being directed in collaboration with actor-filmmaker Satish Kaushik as producer and actor. It revolves around the story of Lal Bihari, a farmer from Uttar Pradesh, who was declared dead from 1976 to 1994. After a relative, in a bid to usurp his land, proved that Bihari had died, the latter had to fight against the bureaucracy to prove that he is alive.
Kaushik had planned to make the film a decade earlier with Anil Kapoor and took on Benegal because of the manner in which the latter developed the screenplay.
This year, the HAF received around 300 submissions from 11 countries and regions. Each winner receives a HK$150,000 (US$19,300) cash prize.
The forum, that connects Asian filmmakers and their upcoming film projects with film financiers worldwide, was held from 24 to 26 March at the Hong Kong convention and exhibition centre.
Hong Kong’s Angel Whispers and Taiwan’s Private Eyes:1 picked up the main awards at the HAF.
Actress Carrie NG’s directorial debut, a murder mystery about the disappearance of a prostitute, won the HAF Award for a Hong Kong project. She is set to co-direct with Shirley Yung. Chang Jung-chi’s Private Eyes, about a playwright who becomes a private detective, won the award for a non-Hong Kong project. The director’s Touch of the Light (2012) was a HAF project in 2009.
The HAF Script Development Award went to Jack Shih’s The Solitary Pier, an animated film about a fisherman in a small seaside village. The HAF/Fox Chinese Film Development Fund, which comes with a HK$100,000 (US$12,900) prize and a development contract with Fox, went to Shu Haolun’s romance drama Love is Speaking.
The Wouter Barendrecht Award named after the late Fortissimo Films co-founder that comes with a cash prize of HK$50,000 (US$6,440), went to Fazila AmiriI’s documentary Hip Hop Kabul. Presenters Michael J. Werner and Nelleke Driessen praised the project as “very daring”.
Established for the first time this year, the Fushan Documentary Award went to Zhao Liang’s Dust about the coal mines of Inner Mongolia. Zhao will receive a HK$100,000 (US$12,900) cash prize and a development contract with the newly formed Fushan Features.
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.
