Hindi
Ship of Theseus wins award at Transylvania, now going to Munich
NEW DELHI: Ship of Theseus by Anand Gandhi has won the Transylvania Trophy for Best Film and a cash prize of 15,000 Euro at the 12th edition of Transylvania International Film Festival which ended over the weekend.
The Best Cinematography Award went to Pankaj Kumar for Ship of Theseus. The award comprises of € 3,500 (in post-production services) offered by Cinelabs.
Ship of Theseus competed with 11 other films such as Wadjda from Saudi Arabia and The Deflowering of Eva van End from The Netherlands.
The film features three different stories – an experimental photographer, an intellectual monk, and a young stockbroker, each exploring their own ethical, moral and aesthetic dilemmas.
Slated for release in India on 19 July, the film has screened at Toronto, Tokyo, Dubai, BFI London Film Festival, Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles and International Film Festival Rotterdam among others.
It is now being entered in the 31st International Filmfest München opening on 28 June.
Mira Nair‘s The Reluctant Fundamentalist is also being screened at Munich under the Spotlight section that showcases films from established directors.
Gandhi‘s Ship of Theseus is a part of "International Independents", a section which the festival authorities say "combines breakthroughs, surprises and undiscovered treasure from around the world by primarily young directors with styles all their own."
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.
