Hindi
Ketan Mehta floats film distribution firm
MUMBAI: Filmmaker Ketan Mehta, singer Anup Jalota, actor–director Deepa Sahi and media entrepreneur Subur Khan have floated a film distribution company.
Open Door Films Limited will be a wholly integrated distribution platform for independent controlled budget films Its main objective will be to provide a viable, transparent, alternative, global marketing and distribution platform for high quality Indian independent films.
Said Mehta, “Good content deserves good distribution. We keep saying that content is king, but honestly, when we get good content we don‘t respect it. It isn‘t given the kind of promotional push that it deserves to make it viable at the box office. Bad distribution kills the film, before it can even try and reach its core target audience. Recently, many concept-driven, budget-controlled films have been much appreciated by the audiences. With Open Door Films Limited, this is precisely what we seek to achieve, to turn this trend into a tide.”
In the changed contemporary film scenario in India, over 100 independent films every year fail to get proper distribution. These films, made with a lot of passion and commitment, fail to reach their target audience due to the absence of a distribution platform designed for and dedicated to such films.
With all big film and media corporations vying for big budget, big star cast films, small budget independent films find it extremely difficult to see the light of the day. Open Door Films aims to change all that.
Open Door Films will provide end-to-end marketing and distribution solutions for Indian independent filmmakers, thereby opening up immense possibilities for the future of Indian Cinema. The company, with strategic investment from Maya Digital Media, Anup Jalota and Subur Khan, will bridge the gap between makers of concept-driven films and the film distribution network.
The first film distributed by the company will be Sahi‘s Tere Mere Phere. The film takes a comic look at the man-woman relationship through the point of view of the four principal characters of the film.
The company plans to distribute between 25 and 30 films over the next three years.
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.
