Hindi
NFDC India Screenwriters’ Lab 2013 heads to TIFF
MUMBAI: Announcing its final selection of six projects for the 2013Screenwriters’ Lab, from over 350 applications, NFDC (National Film Development Corporation – India) relocates the first stage of its Lab to Toronto in co-operation with TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival). The Lab has previously been hosted by Locarno and Venice festivals, each having welcomed two editions of the Screenwriters’ Lab.
TIFF Bailey Artistic director Cameron said, “Indian independent cinema is taking the world by storm and it all begins with its screenwriters. We’re proud to welcome this workshop to the Toronto International Film Festival, and support the NFDC’s important work.”
NFDC MD Nina Lath Gupta said, “NFDC is delighted to be expanding it’s long relationship with the festival by bringing the now renowned Film Bazaar Screenwriters’ Lab to Toronto for the first time, allowing our 6 writers’ creative process to be imbedded within TIFF, especially as Ritesh Batra’s acclaimed The Lunchbox, developed in our 2011 edition of this same lab is honoured with a Gala screening on 8 September”
The six projects selected are to be work-shopped first in Toronto and further in Goa in November, before being presented in the annual Film Bazaar Co Pro Market:Nikhil Mahajan’s first feature Pune 52 was released in 2013 and was a follow up to his feature Doc Half a Billion Dreams (2011)
Bela Negi wrote and directed the 2010 comedy Daayen Ya Baayen (Right or Left) and revisits the quirkiness of Indian rural life in this project which will be her second feature
Varun Grover is perhaps best known for his collaboration with Anurag Kashyap as lyricist for That Girl in the Yellow Boots and Gangs of Wasseypur, and Vasan Bala’s Peddlers, Varun also has emerged through TV stand-up comedy writing.
Shanker Raman is an award winning Cinematographer and (co) writer known for Frozen (TIFF 2007) and Harud (Autumn- TIFF 2010)
Ashish Aryan is transitioning from a successful commercials career, taking on his first feature film with his project T for Taj Mahal, which he’ll be co-writing with Sachin Ladia, one of the writers of Kashyap’s Gangs of Wasseypur
Rajesh Jalla is a renowned documentary director best known for Children of the Pyre (Best Doc Montreal 2013) who turns his lyrical style towards his first fiction feature project.
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.
