Hindi
Anhey Ghorey Da Daan to release on 10 August
MUMBAI: National award-winning Punjabi film Anhey Ghorey Da Daan (Alms for the Blind Horse) is scheduled to release across select cities on 10 August.
“With the release of this film, we are delivering on our promise to build the brand ‘Cinemas of India‘, which endorses deserving independent and art-house cinema across India and in doing so, we showcase to Indian audiences the diversity that exists in Indian cinema,” NFDC, managing director Nina Lath Gupta said in a press statement.
The National Film Development Corporation (NFDC), in association with PVR ‘Directors Rare‘, which gives a platform to critically-acclaimed and independent films, will theatrically release the movie across Delhi, Mumbai, Jalandhar and Ludhiana.
Anhey Ghorhey Da Daan is based on Punjabi novelist Gurdial Singh‘s novel by the same name. The film, which has been to international film festivals in Venice, London, Abu Dhabi, Rotterdam and Busan, brings to the screen the effect that years of subordination can bring to struggling masses.
The film won the 59th National film award for best direction and best cinematography.
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.
