Hindi
Lives of rat catchers to hit the screens on 20 April
MUMBAI: Documentary maker Miriam Chandy Menacherry‘s The Rat Race will commercially release on 20 April.
The documentary unravels the lives of rat catchers who work every night while the rest of the city sleeps.
The film is about the men hired by the Bombay Municipal Corporation who set out with torches and sticks to bring back the carcasses of 30 rats that are counted every morning to earn their daily wages.
" I am terrified of rats, so that is certainly not a reason why I spent two years filming them….but in this film I saw the chance to use the rat as a vehicle to explore a city and the never say die spirit of its people. To me, this is a film that truly represents Mumbai and a population who keep alive their dreams even as they struggle with their daily reality," observed Menacherry, when asked as to why she ventured into making the film.
The story that captivated an international jury in Cannes in 2010 then had three sold out shows in Amsterdam where it premiered at IDFA, one of the biggest documentary festivals.
The film has been made on a budget of Rs 3 million. Talking of the promotion of the film, Menacherry said: “We, of course, have little or no promotional budget but I am relying on word of mouth to work things in favour of the film. After all this is a local story that is all too real, it has compelling characters and a wicked dark humour. If it could have international audiences giving it a standing ovation, I am sure Indian audiences will catch more of the nuances. The theatres are giving us a week’s release in prime time slot, which means that they see a reason to take the risk.”
The film is supported by well known actor and comedian Jaaved Jaaferi, who recently launched the Indian Documentary Foundation (IDF), an organisation that aims to take the documentary genre to mainstream audiences.
The documentary will be released at PVR and Big Cinemas in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore.
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.
