Hindi
UTV announces release dates of Barfi, Joker and Heroine
MUMBAI: UTV Motion Pictures has announced the release dates of three of its big-ticket films.
While Anurag Basu-directed film Barfi! will release on 31 August, the Akshay Kumar-Sonakshi Sinha-starrer Joker will release on 14 September and the Madhur Bhandarkar-helmed Kareena Kapoor-starrer Heroine on 21 September.
Barfi!, which stars Ranbir Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra and Ileyana, is the story of Barfi-the chalu Chaplin who the girls love but the cops hate. He can‘t speak but is always talked about. His naughty antics will make one scream but he never listens, because he can‘t.
On the other hand, the country‘s first ever extra-terrestrial drama, Shirish Kunder-directed film Joker is the story of Agastya (Akshay Kumar), a researcher probing the existence of aliens in the universe who returns to his small little native village. The out-of-luck Agastya takes it upon himself to put his crazy village on the global map and continues with his exploration on aliens from there.
While his plan gets the village attention from across the world, it also comes with a great deal of risk. Will aliens save the day for Aghastya or will his plans fall like a pack of cards?
The film has been produced by UTV Motion Pictures, Three‘s Company and Kumar‘s Hari Om Productions.
Lastly, Heroine is based on the life and times of a superstar heroine from the dream factory we call ‘Bollywood‘. The film is an entertaining, daring, emotional, shocking, glamorous, scandalous behind the scenes account of the reality behind the world of glitz and glamour that our film stars inhabit.
For a country obsessed with films and film stars, Heroine will take audiences on a voyeuristic journey to see what really goes on behind the closed doors of make-up rooms and vanity vans. It gives them a chance to go beyond the gorgeous smiles and politically correct quotes, to see what really happens in the lives of India‘s sweethearts.
The film has been produced by UTV Motion Pictures and Madhur Bhandarkar.
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.
